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POPULAR HISTORY 



PRIESTCRAFT 



IN ALL AGES AND NATIONS. 



WILLIAM HOWITT. 



Help us to save free Gospel from the paw 
Of hireling wolves, whose conscience is their maw. 

Milton. 



l 



LONDON: 
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 

1833. 



i 



H* 



H- aiming and Co., Printers, 
London-hoi. sc Yard. 



v?t. 



*7 

Oh ! Truth ! immortal Truth ! on what wild ground 
Still hast thou trod through this unspiritual sphere ! 
The strong, the brutish, and the vile surround 
Thy presence, lest thy streaming glory cheer 
The poor, the many, without price, or bound. 
Drowning thy voice, they fill the popular ear, 
In thy high name, with canons, creeds, and laws, 
Feigning to serve, that they may mar thy cause. 



,1 



And the great multitude doth crouch and bear 

The bur.den of the selfish. That emprize, — 

That lofty spirit of Virtue which can dare 

To rend the bands of error from all eyes, 

And from the freed soul pluck each sensual care, 

To them is but a fable. Therefore lies 

Darkness upon the mental desart still, 

And wolves devour, and robbers walk at will. 

Yet, ever and anon, from thy bright quiver, 
The flaming arrows of thy might are strown ; 
And rushing forth, thy dauntless children shiver 
The strength of foes who press too near thy throne. 
Then, like the sun, or thy Almighty Giver, 
Thy light is through the startled nations shown ; 
And generous indignation tramples down 
The sophist's web, and the oppressor's crown. 

Oh ! might it burn for ever ! But in vain — 
For vengeance rallies the alarmed host, 
Who from men's souls draw their dishonest gain. 
For thee they smite, audaciously they boast, 
Even while thy sons are in thy bosom slain. 
Yet this is thy sure solace — that not lost, 
Each drop of blood, each tear, — Cadmean seed, 
Shall send up armed champions at thy need. 

1827. W.H. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



This little work is a rajiid attempt to present a con- 
cise and concentrated view of universal Priestcraft, to 
assist and strengthen the present disposition to abate 
that nuisance in England. Had time been allowed, 
it would have been easy to have worked it up into a 
most luminous whole, and to have drawn upon many 
other sources ; but what I have here collected from 
the best authorities, and said from the impulse of my 
own mind, 1 think will be sufficient to establish any 
disinterested person in the conviction, that priestcraft 
is one of the greatest curses which has afflicted the 
earth ; and in the persuasion, that till its hydra heads 
are crushed there can be no perfect liberty. 

There may be some who will differ from me as to 
the theory of Bryant — but that does not affect the 
main question. Whether the Arkite theory be cor- 
rect or not, nothing is more certain than that Pagan- 
ism had one common origin, and that that origin lies 
far back in the early ages of the world. Nothing is 
more certain than that priests have, in all ages, fol- 
lowed one system — that of availing themselves of the 
superstitions of the people for their own interested 
motives ; and nothing better attested than the crimes 
and delusions of that order of men treated of in this 
volume. , 



VI ADVERTISEMENT. 

There will be some who will exclaim when I come 
to the English Church, oh ! the author is a dissenter ! 
— I am a dissenter ; and therefore, as a looker-on, 
according to a favourite popular maxim, am likely to 
have a truer view of the game than they who are 
playing it. I am a dissenter ; and one of the most 
sturdy, and ceremony-despising class ; and therefore, 
having deserted " the beggarly elements M of state 
creeds, am more anxious to release my fellow-men 
from the thraldom of state priests. I am a dissenter; 
and therefore, feeling the burden and the injustice of 
being compelled to support a system whose utility I 
deny, and whose corruptions need little labour of 
proof, I have the greater reason to raise my voice 
against it. 

I am aware that I shall experience abundance of 
abuse and hostility; but that is the certain fate of 
every one who defends the truth. I only say — 
" Fiat justitia mat ccelum:" and I thank God that 
I never yet paused to ask what is politic, but what is 
right. I thank God, too, that neither fearing one 
class of men, nor hoping aught from another, my 
only motive has been, justice to all, and kindness to 
the poor, — my only object, the spread of truth and 
knowledge ; — and as for the result — let that be as it 
may. 

Nottingham, June 4th, 1833. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Page 

The two Evil Principles, Kingcraft and Priestcraft, 
co-eval in their origin — Innumerable Historians of 
the one, but none singly and entirely of the other — 
The real and monstrous Character of Priestcraft — 
Evil Systems attacked in this work without mercy, 
but not Men -------1 

CHAPTER II. 

Paganism distinguished universally by the same great 
leading Principles — supposed to originate in the 
corruption of the Patriarchal Worship soon after the 
Flood — Probable diffusion of Original Population — 
Origin of the Doctrine of Three Gods, in Greece, 
Egypt, Persia, Syria, among the Tartars, Chinese, 
Goths, Americans, etc. — Of the Preservation of the 
Ark in the Religious Ceremonies of all Pagan Na- 
tions — Of the Doctrine of a Succession of Worlds, 
and of a Deluge — Ancient Mysteries celebrated, 
especially by the Greeks, Egyptians, Hindoos, and 
Druids — Advantage taken by Priests of this great 
system of Superstition ----- 5 

CHAPTER III. 

Mythology of the Assyrians and Syrians — the horrors of 
Moloch — Chemosh — Baal and Baal- Fires — Bryant's 
Theory of the Cuthic Tribes agrees with the exist- 
ence of Castes in all Pagan Nations — Spirit of the 
Syrian Priests as shewn in the Jewish History — Vile 
Deceptions of Priests — The Wife of the God — 
Priestly Arts exposed by Daniel - - - 12 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Page 

The same system of Superstition and Priestcraft which 
prevailed in Asia, existing also among the Celts and 
Goths of ancient Europe — Every where the Priests 
the dominant Caste — In Britain, Gaul, and Germany 
their state shewn by Caesar and Tacitus — The Notions, . 
Sacrifices, and Superstitions of Scandinavia. - - 20 

CHAPTER V. 

The same system discovered, to the surprise of the learned, 
in America — The Gods, Doctrines, and Practices of 
the Northern Indians, Mexicans, and Peruvians — 
Dominance of the Priests and Nobles, and Slavery 
of the People — their bloody Sacrifices and fearful 
Orgies, similar to those of the Asiatics — The amazing 
number of their Human Sacrifices recorded by the 
Spanish writers — Striking Picture of Priestcraft in 
Southey's Madoc. ------ 31 

CHAPTER VI. 

The Priest-ridden condition of Egypt notorious — involved 
in the same system of Priestcraft already noticed — 
Dr. Robertson's Theory of the Uniformity of Pagan 
Creeds insufficient, and why — Egyptian Superstitions 
— Excessive Veneration of Animals, and consequent 
singular Rites and Facts — Horrid and licentious 
Customs — Policy of their Priests to conceal Know- 
ledge from the People — place themselves above the 
Nobles and even the Kings^regulate all the daily 
actions of the Kings — Striking Illustrations of the 
verity of the Greek accounts in the History of 
Joseph — Priests supposed to have been sole Kings in 
Egypt for ages. -- -----45 

CHAPTER VII. 

The popular Theology of the Greeks — Another and more 
Occult Theology — Effect of the Poetry of Homer on 
the spirits of his countrymen — his noble Maxims — 
Priestcraft compelled to adopt a nice policy by the 
free spirit of the Greeks ; yet bloody and licentious 
Rites introduced, and the people effectually enslaved 
by means of Festivals, Games, Sacrifices, Oracles, 
Augury, and Mysteries — The immense influence of 



CONTENTS. IX 

Page 

Oracles — Description of the Mysteries — Description 
of the Egyptian darkness with respect to them — 
Taliesin's allusions to them — Priestly Avarice - 54 

CHAPTER VIII. 

India — Priestcraft in its boldest aspect — Doctrines, Sa- 
crifices, and licentious Rites — Women of the Tem- 
ple — Immense Wealth accumulated by the Brahmins 
— seized by the Arabians — Mahmoud of Gazna — 
his Feast at Canaugha — his Adventure at the 
Temple of Sumnaut — Eternal Slavery stamped by 
the Brahmins on the Hindoos by the institution of 
Castes — Inviolable Sanctity and Immunities of the 
Brahmins— The Sooders— The Chandelahs— Remarks 74 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Hebrews — Comparison of the Old Man of the Sea, 
and the Old Man of the Church— The Hebrew 
Priesthood the only one ever divinely ordained, yet 
evil in its tendency, and fatal to the Nation — began 
in Aaron in dastardly equivocation — shewed itself 
in the Sons of Eli, in avarice and lewdness — and 
finally crucified Christ - - - 94 

CHAPTER X. 

Popery — Christ and Christianity — the latter speedily 
corrupted — Acts by which the Papal Church seized 
on power „..-.-. 100 

CHAPTER XI. 

Popery continued : Struggles of the Popes for power — 
The Emperors favour them on account of their in- 
fluence with the People — Scandalous transactions 
between them and the French monarchs — Pepin and 
Charlemagne — Gregory VII., the notorious Hilde- 
brand, asserts absolute power over Kings — his in- 
tercourse with the Countess Matilda — claims the 
right of installing Bishops — Further enormities of 
the Popes — This example followed by the Bishops 
and Clergy, who become Dukes and Nobles — Evil 
influence of Councils - - - - - -110 



Xll CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



Page 



Evils of the system of Church Patronage — Simony, and 
almost all the Abuses in the Church flow from it — 
Strange Defence of the Church by a Clergyman — 
Proofs of the beneficial effects of moderate Clerical 
Incomes — Scotch and German Clergy — False notions 
of Gentility held by our Clergy — Decker's Declara- 
tion that Christ was a true Gentleman — What Cler- 
gymen might be — Instances of what they are under 
the private Patronage system — Milton and Spelman's 
opinions of Surplice Fees ----- 245 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Confirmation in the Country — its Picturesque and Poeti- 
cal Appearance — its Licentious Consequences, arising 
from the Apathy of the Clergy - - - - 261 

CHAPTER XX. 

Retrospective View of the Effects of Priestcraft — The 
great Moral and Political Lesson it teaches — Con- 
cluding Remarks __---- 270 



PRIESTCRAFT IN ALL AGES. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENERAL VIEW OF PRIESTCRAFT. 



This unfortunate world has been blasted in all ages 
by two evil principles — Kingcraft and Priestcraft — 
that, taking advantage of human necessities, in 
themselves not hard — salutary, and even beneficial 
in their natural operation — the necessity of civil 
government, and that of spiritual instruction, have 
warped them cruelly from their own pure direction, 
and converted them into the most odious, the most 
terrible and disastrous scourges of our race. These 
malign powers have ever begun, as it were, at the 
wrong end of things. Kingcraft, seizing upon the 
office of civil government, not as the gift of popular 
choice, and to be filled for the good of nations, but 
with the desperate hand of physical violence, has 
proclaimed that it was not made for man, but man 
for it — that it possessed an inherent and divine right 
to rule, to trample upon mens' hearts, to violate their 
dearest rights, to scatter their limbs and their blood 
at its pleasure upon the earth ; and, in return for 
its atrocities, to be worshipped on bended knee, and 
hailed as a god. Its horrors are on the face of every 
nation ; its annals are written in gore in all civilized 

B 



4 PRIESTCRAFT 

made it a prey to all the restless and savage passions 
of an uncultured and daily irritated soul ; robbed it 
of the highest joys of earth or heaven — those of the 
exercise of a perfected intellect and a benevolent 
spirit; and finally, by its tyrannies, its childish 
puerilities, its inane pomps and most ludicrous dog- 
mas, overwhelmed the middle ages with the horrors 
of an iron bigotry, and the modern world with the 
tenfold horrors of infidel heartlessness and the wars 
of atheism. 

This is a mighty and an awful charge. Alas ! the 
annals of all people are but too affluent in proofs of its 
justice. I shall prove this through the most popular 
histories, that the general reader may, if he please, 
easily refer to them, and be satisfied of the correctness 
of my statements. While I proceed, however, to 
draw these proofs from the most accessible works, I 
shall carefully war alone with the principle, not with 
individual men. The very worst systems have often 
involved in their blind intricacies the best of men : 
and in some of those which it will be my duty, as a 
man, to denounce, there have been, and there are at 
the present moment, numbers of sincere and excel- 
lent beings, who are an honour and a blessing to their 
race. 






IN ALL AGES. 



CHAPTER II. 

ORIGIN OF PAGANISM. 



Priestcraft and kingcraft began at pretty much the 
same time, and that at an early age of the world, 
to exercise their baneful influence over it. Whether 
they existed, and if so, what they did, in the ante- 
diluvian world, we know not, and it concerns us 
little : but immediately after the flood, they became 
conspicuous. Nimrod is usually supposed to be 
the first monarch; the first man who, not satisfied 
with the mild patriarchal rule over his brethren, is 
believed to have collected armies, dispossessed the 
peaceful children of Shem of part of their territories 
by violence, and swayed all whom he could by the 
terrors of overwhelming force. Priestcraft, it is evi- 
dent by many indubitable signs, was busily at work 
at the same moment. Certain common principles 
running through idolatrous worship in every known 
part of the globe, have convinced the most acute and 
industrious antiquarians, that every pagan worship 
in the world has the same origin; and that origin 
could have coincided only with some early period, 
when the whole human family was together in one 
place. This fact, now that countries, their habits 
and opinions, have been so extensively examined, 
would have led learned men of the present day, had 
not the Bible been in our possession, to the confident 
conclusion that mankind had, at first, but one source, 
and one place of abode : that their religious opinions 



6 PRIESTCRAFT 

had been at that time uniform : and that, dispersing 
from that point of original residence, they had carried 
these opinions into all regions of the earth, where, 
through the progress of ages, they had received many 
modifications, been variously darkened and disfigured, 
but not to such an extent as to extinguish those 
great leading features which mark them as the off- 
spring of one primeval parent. But the Bible not 
only shews that such was the origin of the various 
human families, not only shews the time when they 
dwelt in one place, when and how they were thence 
dispersed, but also furnishes us with a certain key 
to the whole theory of universal paganism. 

We see at once that every system of heathen my- 
thology had its origin in the corruption of patriarchal 
worship before the dispersion at Babel. There the 
whole family of man was collected in the descendants 
of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhat ; and 
thence, at that time, they were scattered abroad by 
the hand of God over the world. Japhat colonized 
the whole of Europe ; all those northern regions 
called Tartary and Siberia ; and, in process of time, 
by the easy passage of Behring's Straits, the entire 
continent of America. His son Gomer seems clearly 
to have been the father of those who were originally 
called Gomerians ; and by slight variations, were 
afterwards termed Comarians, Cimmerians, Cymbri, 
Cumbri, Cambri, and Umbri ; and, in later years, 
Celts, Gauls, and Gaels. These extended themselves 
over the regions north of Armenia and Bactriana ; 
thence over nearly all Europe, and first planted 
Britain and Ireland. Magog, Tubal, and Mesech, 
as we learn from Ezekiel, dwelt far to the north of 
Judea, and became the ancestors of the great Sclavo- 
nic or Sarmatian families ; the name of Magog still 
existing in the appellations of Mogli, Monguls, and 



IN ALL AGES. / 

Mongolians ; those of Tubal and Mesech, in To- 
bolsk], Moschici, and Moscow and Moscovites : 
Madai was father of the Medes, and Javan of the 
original inhabitants of Greece, where we may trace 
the names of his sons Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, 
and Dodanim, in Elis, Tarsus, Cittium, and Dodona. 

The posterity of Shem were confined to southern 
Asia; founding by his sons Elam, or Persia, Ashur, 
or Assyria, a province of Iran, or Great Assyrian 
empire of Nimrod, whose son Cush appears to have 
subdued these descendants of Shem. Arphaxad 
became the father of the Hebrews and other kindred 
nations ; his descendant Peleg founded Babylonia ; 
and Joktan, stretching far towards the east, probably 
became the father of the Hindoos. Ophir, one of the 
sons of Joktan, is often mentioned in Scripture as 
dwelling in a land of gold, to which voyages were 
made by ships issuing from the Red Sea, and sailing 
eastward; but Elam and Cush occupied the whole 
sea-coast of Persia, as far as the Indus. This, there- 
fore, brings us to the great peninsular of Hindostan 
for the seat of Ophir. Lud, the fourth son of Shem, 
is presumed to be the founder of Lydia ; and Aram, 
the fifth, the father of Mesopotamia and Syria. 

Ham was at first mixed with Shem throughout 
southern Asia, and became the sole occupant of 
Africa. Of his sons, Cush became the founder of 
Iran, or Central Asia, the great Assyrian empire, 
and the progenitor of all those called Cushim, Cushas, 
Cuths, Goths, Scuths, Scyths, Scots, or Gauls. 
Mizraim peopled Egypt ; Phut, the western frontier 
of Egypt, and thence passing west and south, spread 
over the greater part of Africa: and Canaan, it is 
well known, peopled the tract afterwards inhabited by 
the Israelites. 

Thus, it is said, was the world peopled ; and that 



8 PRIESTCRAFT 

it was thus peopled, we learn not only from Moses? 
but from profane writers; and find both accounts 
confirmed by abundant evidence in the manners, 
traditions, language, and occupance of the different 
races at the present day. Sir William Jones found 
only three great original languages to exist — Arabic, 
Sclavonic, and Sanscrit: and these three all issue 
from one point, central Asia, whence, by consent of 
the most ancient records and traditions of the great 
primeval nations, their original ancestors spread. 

But before they were thus scattered, they had 
corrupted the religious doctrines they had received 
from their great progenitor, Noah ; or rather, had set 
them aside, in order to deify Noah and his three sons, 
whom they had come to regard as a re-appearance of 
Adam and his three sons, Cain, Abel, and Seth. The 
singular coincidence of circumstances between Adam 
and Noah, forced this upon their imaginations. Adam, 
the first man, and father of the 1 first world, — and 
Noah, the first man, and father of the second world, 
had each three sons conspicuous in history ; and of 
these three, one in each case was a bad one — Cain 
and Ham. Led by this, to consider the second family 
but an avater of the first, they regarded them as 
immortal, and worshipped them. Hence we have in 
all pagan mythologies a triad of principal gods. In 
the Greek — Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto; in the 
Hindoo — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva ; in the Egyp- 
tian — Osiris, Horus, and Typhon; one of whom, in 
each case, is a deity of a dark nature, like Cain and 
Ham. The Persians had their Ormuzd, Mithras, 
and Ahriman; the Syrians, their Monimus, Aziz, 
and Ares ; the Canaanites, their Baal-Shalisha, or 
self- triplicated Baal ; the Goths, their Odin, Vile, 
and Ve, who are described as the three sons of the 
mysterious cow, a symbol of the ark ; the Jakuthi 



IN ALL AGES. 9 

Tartars, their Artugon, Schugo-teugon, and Tangara, 
the last, even in name, the Tanga-tanga of the 
Peruvians: for this singular fact stops not with the 
great primitive nations ; it extends itself to all others, 
even to those discovered in modern times. Like 
China and Japan, the Peruvians were found, on the 
discovery of America, to have their triads, Apomti, 
Churunti, and Intiquoaqui; or the father-sun, the 
brother-sun, and the son-sun. The Mexicans had 
also their Mexitli, Tlaloc, andTezcallipuca; the last, 
the god of repentance. The Virginians, Iroquois, 
and various nations of North- American Indians, held 
similar notions. The New Zealanders believe that 
three gods made the first man, and the first woman 
from the man's rib ; and their general term for bone 
is Eve. The Otaheitans had a similar idea. 

Thus, far and wide, to the very hidden ends of the 
earth, spread this notion of a triad; and hence, in 
the second century, it found its way, through Justin 
Martyr, into the Christian church. 

The post-diluvians likewise held the Ark in the 
most sacred veneration. It was that into which their 
great father and all living things had entered and 
floated away safely over the destroying waters. It 
was the type of the earth into which Adam had 
entered by death ; and, as they supposed, re-appeared 
in Noah. Hence, an ark is to be found in nearly 
every system of pagan worship. After it were fash- 
ioned the most ancient temples. It was borne in the 
most religious processions of Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, 
Ceres, and amongst the Druids ; and has been found, 
to the astonishment of discoverers and missionaries, 
amongst the Mexicans, the North- American Indians, 
and the South-sea Islanders. 

Hence, also, the doctrine of a succession of worlds, 
from the supposed re-appearance of Adam and his 



10 PRIESTCRAFT 

three sons, in Noah and his three sons, which has 
expanded itself into the great system of transmigra- 
tions and avaters of the Hindoos. Hence, also, the 
traditions of a universal deluge to be found amongst 
all the ancient nations; amongst the wild tribes of 
America; amongst the Hindoos in the east, and the 
Celts in the west. Hence, the close connexion of 
lakes with heathen temples; and hence, lastly, the 
ancient mysteries, which were but a symbolical repre- 
sentation of entering the ark, or great cave of death 
and life ; which, as the old world was purified by the 
flood, was supposed to purify and confer a new life on 
those who passed through those mysteries, which 
were celebrated, with striking similarity in Greece, 
India, Egypt, and amongst the Druids in these 
islands. These, and many other general features of 
paganism — for abundant illustration of which, I refer 
my reader to the learned works of Calmet, Bryant, 
Faber, and Spencer, De Legibus Ritualibus Hebrae- 
orum — sufficiently testify to the common origin of all 
heathen systems of worship ; and we shall presently 
find how amply the priests of all ages and all the Gen- 
tile nations, have laid hold on these rich materials, 
and converted them into exuberant sources of wealth, 
and power, and honour to themselves, and of terror, de- 
ception, and degradation to their victims — the people. 
It may, perhaps, be said that they themselves were 
but the slaves of superstition, in common with those 
they taught ; and that it would be unfair to charge 
them with the wilful misleading of their auditors, 
when they themselves were blinded by the common 
delusions of their times and countries. But we must 
recollect, that though the people were taught by them 
to believe, and could not, in dark times, easily escape 
the influence of. their doctrines and practices, studi- 
ously adapted to dazzle and deceive the senses, yet it 



IN ALL AGES. 11 

was impossible for the priests to enter upon their 
office, without discovering that those terrors were 
fictitious, — without rinding that they were called 
upon to maintain a series of utter fallacies. The 
people might listen to oracles, uttered amid a multi- 
tude of imposing pageants, and awful solemnities ; in 
the sacred gloom of temples and groves ; and might 
really believe that a god spoke. But where were the 
priests? Behind these scenes ! — and must soon have 
found that, instead of the inspiration of a present god, 
they themselves were the actors of the vilest imposi- 
tions ; which, through the temptations of power, and 
fame, and wealth, they became the willing means of 
fixing on their countrymen. 

When did any one, in any nation, on discovering 
that he had entered an order of impostors, renounce 
their connexion, and abandon his base calling? 
Never! — the spirit of priestcraft was too subtly 
potent for him. He either acquiesced readily in 
measures, which were to him, pregnant with honour, 
ease, and abundance ; or saw that instant destruction 
awaited him, from the wily and merciless spirit of 
priestcraft, if he gave but a symptom of abjuring, or 
disclosing its arcana of gainful deceit. As the entrance 
of the Adytus of the mysteries, so the vestibule of 
the priestly office was probably guarded by naked 
swords, and oaths full of destruction to the back- 
slider. Be that as it may, there is not a fact on the 
face of history more conspicuous than this — that no 
order of men has ever clung to the service of its 
caste, or has fulfilled its purposes, however desperate, 
or infamously cruel they might be, with the same 
fiery and unflinching zeal as priests. 



12 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER III. 



MYTHOLOGY OF THE ASSYRIANS AND SYRIANS. 



We have now seen how idolatry was diffused over 
the globe, forming a field of no less amplitude than 
the world itself for priestcraft to exercise itself in ; 
full of ignorance, and full of systems prolific in all 
the wild creation of superstition so auspicious to 
priestly desires ; and we shall soon see that such 
advantages were not neglected by that evil power, 
but were eagerly laid hold on, and by its indefa- 
tigable activity the earth was speedily overrun by 
every curse, and horror, and pollution, that can fix 
itself on unfortunate humanity. 

We shall take a hasty survey of its progress in the 
most ancient nations, Syria and Assyria ; we shall 
then pass rapidly into Scandinavia and the British 
Isles, following the course of Druidism ; and, without 
regard to the order of time, glance at the confirma- 
tion of this ancient state of things, by that which 
was found to exist at the time of their discovery in 
America and the isles of the Indian Ocean. By this 
plan we shall leave our course clear in a direct pro- 
gress through ancient Egypt, Greece, and Hindostan ; 
where we shall leave the review of priestcraft as it 
existed in Paganism, and contemplate its aspect in 
Judea, under the direct ordinances of God ; then, 
under Christianity, in the Romish church ; and, 



IN ALL AGES. 13 

finally, in the ecclesiastical establishment of our own 
country. 

The Bible furnishes us with abundant evidences 
of what idolatry was in Syria, and the neighbouring 
kingdoms of Philistia, Moab, Amalek and others. 
The principal gods of these countries were Baal, 
Moloch, and Chemosh : but the number of false 
gods altogether was extremely numerous. The 
more gods the more shrines, the more priestly gains 
and influence. The principal characteristics of the 
whole idol dynasty, were horrible cruelty and gross 
licentiousness. Chemosh was the god of the Moab- 
ites, and his rites were particularly distinguished by 
their lasciviousness. In Syria those of Ashtaroth, or 
Astarte, the queen of heaven, were similar ; but Baal 
and Moloch were the very impersonations of savage 
atrocity. Moloch is represented as a huge metallic 
image in a sitting posture, which, on days of sacrifice, 
was heated to redness in a pit of fire, and young 
children were brought as victims, and placed in his 
extended and burning arms, where they were con- 
sumed in the most exquisite agonies, while the 
devilish band of priests and their retainers drowned 
their piercing cries with the stunning din of drums, 
cymbals, horns, and trumpets. 

Baal, however, was the principal idol of all those 
countries ; and — associated as he was in idea with the 
sun, as was the chief god of all pagan nations, from 
a fanciful process of imagination, treated of at large 
by writers on this subject, but which we need not 
trace here — to him, on almost every lofty eminence, 
fires were kindled at stated periods, and human sa- 
crifices performed in the midst of unbounded and 
infernal glee. The Beal-fires, or Baal-fires, kindled 
on the mountains of Scotland and Ireland by the 
peasantry at Beltane, or May Eve, are the last remains 
of this most ancient and universal superstition. 



14 PRIESTCRAFT 

When we recollect over what an immense extent 
of country, in fact over the greater part of the habit- 
able globe, this idolatry extended ; and the number of 
ages, from the time of the flood to the time of Chris- 
tianity, a period of upwards of two thousand years; 
what a terrible sum of miseries must have been 
inflicted on our race by the diabolical zeal and 
cupidity of pagan priestcraft. From the temple 
of Buddh and Jaggernath in India, to the stony 
circles of Druidism in Europe ; from the snowy 
wastes of Siberia and Scandinavia in the north, to 
the most southern lands in Africa and America, the 
fires of these bloody deities rejoiced the demoniac 
priests and consumed the people. 

Mr. Bryant contends, and his theory seems both 
supported by strong facts and is generally admitted 
by intelligent historians, that the kindred of Nimrod, 
the tribe of Cush, a haughty and dominant race, dis- 
daining labour or commerce, disdaining all profes- 
sions but those of arms or the priesthood, followed 
the progress of diffusive population into all regions, 
and either subduing the original settlers or insinuat- 
ing themselves amongst them, as they had been their 
general corruptors, became their generals, priests, 
and kings. This theory certainly agrees well with 
what the researches of late years have made known of 
the great tribes of emigration from the east ; agrees 
well with what we know of the Gothic or Cuthic na- 
tions, and with the establishment of the despotism 
of the feudal system. Castes, which remain so un- 
broken to the present day in Hindostan, and on 
which we shall have presently to remark, prevailed, 
in a greater or less degree, all over the world. In 
Egypt, Herodotus shews it to have been the case. 
None but kings and priests were noble. In Greece 
they had their race of demi-gods, or descendants of 
the ancient Pelasgi, or Cuthites, from whom their 



IN ALL AGES. 15 

priests, augurs, and kings were chosen. Such was 
the case amongst the Gauls and Britons. The Druids 
were a sacred and noble caste, who disdained to work 
or mingle with the people ; an insult to one of whom 
was instant death, as it is with the Brahmins at the 
present day : and the strong spirit of caste through- 
out all the feudal nations of Europe, not only all 
past history, but present circumstances, shew us. 
Be the origin of dominant castes what it may, no- 
thing is more conspicuous than their existence, and 
the evils, scorns, and ignominious burdens they have 
heaped upon the people. 

Of the rancorous activity of the heathen priest- 
hood to proselyte and extend their influence on all 
sides, the Jewish history is full. Scarcely had the 
Hebrews escaped from Egypt and entered the Desert, 
when the Moabites came amongst them with their 
harlot daughters, carrying beneath their robes the 
images of Chemosh, and scattering among the frail 
Jews the mingled fires of sensual and idolatrous pas- 
sion. Through the whole period of the adminis- 
tration of the Judges, they were indefatigably at 
work, and brought upon the backsliding Hebrews 
the vengeance of their own living and indignant God. 
The wise and magnificent Solomon they plucked 
from the height of his peerless knowledge and glory, 
and rendered the reigns of his successors continual 
scenes of reproof and desolation, till the whole nation 
was swept into captivity. 

There cannot be a more expressive instance of the 
daring hardihood and fanatic zeal of the priests of 
Baal, nor a finer one of their defeat and punishment, 
than that given on Mount Carmel in the days of 
Ahab and Jezebel. Those pestilential wretches had 
actually, under royal patronage, corrupted or destroy- 
ed the whole legitimate priesthood. There were but 



16 PRIESTCRAFT 

left seven thousand, even of the people, " who had 
not bowed the knee to Baal, nor kissed him." They 
were in pursuit of the noble prophet himself, when 
he came forth and challenged them to an actual proof 
of the existence of their respective deities. 

It may be argued that the readiness with which 
they accepted this challenge, is sufficient evidence 
that they themselves were believers in the existence 
of their deity ; and it may be that some were stupid, 
or fanatic enough to be so ; but it is far likelier that, 
possessing royal patronage, and a whole host of base 
and besotted supporters, they hoped to entrap the 
solitary man : that, knowing the emptiness of their 
own pretensions, they were of opinion that Elijah's 
were equally empty, and therefore came boldly to a 
contest, in which if neither party won, an individual 
against a host would easily be sacrificed to priestly 
fury and popular credulity. Be it as it might, 
nothing is more certain than that the ferocious zeal of 
priestcraft, for its own objects, has been in all ages so 
audacious as not to fear rushing, in the face of the 
world, on the most desperate attempts. This event 
was most illustrative of this blind sacerdotal hardi- 
hood ; for, notwithstanding their signal exposure and 
destruction, yet in every successive age of the Hebrew 
kingdom, the pagan priests ceased not to solicit the 
Israelites to their ruin. The Hebrew kings, ever 
and anon, awoke from the trance of delusion into 
which they drew them, and executed ample vengeance ; 
hewing down their groves, and overturning their 
altars; but it was not till the general captivity, — till 
Judah was humbled for a time, before Babylon, and 
Israel was wholly and for ever driven from the land, 
that the pest was annihilated. 

The mythology of Assyria was of much the same 
nature ; — Baal, however, being there held in far 



IN ALL AGES. 17 

higher honour than all other gods ; for the priesthood, 
according to the servile cunning of its policy, had 
flattered the royal house by deifying its founder, and 
identifying him with the sun by the name of Belus, or 
Bel. What I have already said of this god will 
suffice ; and I shall only state that, as the priesthood 
there had shewn its usual character of adulation to 
the high, and cruelty to the low, so it displayed 
almost more than its customary lewdness. Herodotus 
tells us, that " at the top of the tower of Belus, in a 
chapel, is placed a couch magnificently adorned : and 
near it a table of solid gold ; but there is no statue in 
the place. No man is suffered to sleep here, but a 
female occupies the apartment, whom the Chaldean 
priests affirm their deity selects from "the whole 
nation as the object of his pleasures. They declare 
that their deity enters this apartment by night, and 
reposes upon this couch. A similar assertion is 
made by the Egyptians of Thebes ; for in the interior 
part of the temple of the Thebean Jupiter, a woman, 
in like manner, sleeps. Of these two women, it is 
presumed, that neither of them have any communica- 
tion with the other sex. In which predicament, the 
priestess of the temple of Paterae, in Lycia, is also 
placed. Here is no regular oracle ; but whenever a 
divine communication is expected, the woman is 
obliged to pass the preceding night in the temple. " 
That is, the priests made their god the scape-goat of 
their own unbridled sensuality ; and, under the pre- 
text of providing a sacrifice of beauty to the deity, 
selected the most lovely woman of the nation for 
themselves. 

This species of detestable deception, seems to have 
been carried on to an enormous extent in ancient 
times. If we are to believe all the Grecian stories, 



18 PRIESTCRAFT 

and especially the Homeric ones, of the origin of their 
demi-gods, we can only explain them in this manner. 
A circumstance of the same nature is related by 
Josephus ; which is curious, because the priests of the 
temple in that case, were induced by a young noble 
to inveigle a married lady of whom he had become 
enamoured, into the temple, under pretence that the 
god had a loving desire of her company, and shewed 
that the gratification, not merely of themselves, but 
of men in power, by frauds, however infamous or 
diabolical, has been always a priestly practice. 

But to return to Assyria. The seeds of licentious- 
ness, sown by their early priests, grew and spread 
abundantly in after ages. When the Assyrian was 
merged in the Babylonian empire, the orgies of the 
temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, were in- 
famous above all others; so much so, that every 
woman, whether high or low, was bound by the 
national practice to present herself before the temple 
once in her life, and there submit to prostitute 
herself with whoever first chose her ; and the price 
of her shame was paid into the treasury, to swell the 
revenues of the priests. So horrible a fact has been 
doubted ; but Herodotus seriously asserts it, and it 
has been confirmed by other authorities. 

That these crafty and voluptuous priests were not 
amongst those deceived by their own devices, but 
were solely deceivers, living in honour and abundance 
by juggling the people, we need no better testimony 
than that of the story of Bel and the Dragon. They 
are there represented as setting before the idol 
splendid banquets, which he was asserted to devour 
in the night ; but Daniel scattering sand on the floor, 
shewed the people in the morning the footsteps of the 
priests, their wives and children, who had, as they 



IN ALL AGES. 19 

were regularly accustomed, flocked into the temple 
at night, and helped the god to dispatch his viands. 

Though this story is one of those called apocryphal, 
it is certainly so far true, that it shews what were the 
opinions of the wise at that day, of the priests, 
founded, no doubt, on sufficient observation. 



c 2 



20 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER IV. 

CELTS AND GOTHS. 



Without following minutely the progress of original 
migration, from east to west, through the great 
Scythian deserts, we will now at once open upon the 
human family as it appeared in Europe, when the 
Romans began to extend their conquests into the 
great forests and wild lands of its north-western 
regions: and here, again, we behold with surprise, 
how exactly the nations had preserved those features 
of idolatrous superstition which I have before stated 
to be universal, and which we have been contemplating 
in central Asia. 

Part of southern Europe appears to have been 
peopled by one great branch of the descendants of 
Japhet, under the name of Sclavonians, and to have 
maintained their settlements against all future comers : 
but another great branch, the Gomerians, or Celts, 
had been followed by the warlike and domineering 
Goths, and had, in some cases, received from them 
teachers and governors ; in others, had been totally 
expelled by them, or lost character, language, and 
every thing, in their overwhelming tide. The north- 
ern parts of Britain, Ireland, Wales, Gaul, and some 
other districts, retained the Celtic character ; while 
England, Scandinavia, Germany, Belgium, and some 
other tracts, became decidedly Gothic. Of these facts* 



IN ALL AGES. 21 

the very languages of the respective countries, at the 
present day, remain living proofs. But, whatever 
was the name, the language, or the government of 
the different parts of Europe, everywhere its religion 
was essentially the same ; everywhere the same 
Cuthic race of domineering priests. Everywhere, 
says a sagacious antiquarian, " we find, first, an order 
of priests ; secondly, an order of military nobles ; 
thirdly, a subjugated multitude ; and institutions, the 
spirit of which, is that of thrusting the lower orders 
from all place and authority, and systematically doom- 
ing them to an unalterable state of servile depression." 
Whoever will examine the system of the Druids, as 
he may in Toland's history of them, in Borlace's 
Cornwall, or Davis's Celtic Mythology, will be per- 
fectly convinced of its identity with that of Persia, 
Egypt, and Hindostan. Their triads, their own as- 
sumed sanctity of character, their worship of the god 
Hu, the Buddhu of the east ; their traditions of the 
flood ; the ark, which their circular stone temples 
symbolized ; their human sacrifices ; their doctrine 
of transmigration ; and other abundant characteristics, 
are not to be mistaken. Dr. Borlace was so struck 
with the perfect resemblance of the Druids to the 
Persian Magi and the Indian Brahmins, that he 
declared it was impossible to doubt their identity. 
Mr. Rowland argues in the same manner with regard 
to the Irish Druids, who, as usual, constituted the 
first of the three classes into which the community 
was divided. He feels assured that they must have 
been Magi. Long indeed before our time, Pliny had 
made the same remark, applying the very term of 
Magi to them. 

In Gaul, Caesar found precisely the same state of 
things — the same dominant class ; and has left so 
lucid an account of them, that his representation will, 



22 PRIESTCRAFT 

at once, place before us the actual condition of both 
Gaul and Britain. " Over all Gaul there are only 
two orders of men in any degree of honour and 
esteem : for the common people are little better than 
slaves ; attempt nothing of themselves ; and have no 
share in the public deliberations. As they are gene- 
rally oppressed with debt, heavy tributes, or the 
exactions of their superiors, they make themselves 
vassals to the great, who exercise over them the same 
jurisdiction that masters do over slaves. The two 
orders of men with whom, as we have said, all autho- 
rity and distinctions reside, are the Druids and nobles. 
The Druids preside in matters of religion, have the 
care of public and private sacrifices, and interpret the 
will of the gods. They have the direction and education 
of the youth, by whom they are held in great honour. 
In almost all controversies, whether public or private, 
the decision is left to them ; and if any crime is com- 
mitted, any murder perpetrated, if any dispute arises 
touching an inheritance, or the limits of adjoining 
estates, in all such cases they are supreme judges. 
They decree rewards and punishments ; and if any one 
refuse to submit to their sentence, whether magistrate 
or private man, they interdict him the sacrifices. 
This is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted 
upon the Gauls ; because, such as are under this 
prohibition, are considered as impious and wicked ; 
all men shun them, and decline their conversation 
and fellowship, lest they should suffer from the con- 
tagion of their misfortunes. They can neither have 
recourse to the law for justice, nor are capable of any 
public office. The Druids are all under one chief. 
Upon his death, a successor is elected by suffrage ; 
but sometimes they have recourse to arms before the 
election can be brought to issue. Once a year, they 
assemble at a consecrated place in the territories of 



IN ALL AGES. T6 

the Carnutes, whose country is supposed to be in the 
middle of Gaul. Hither such as have any suits 
depending, flock from all parts, and submit implicitly 
to their decrees. Their institution is supposed to 
have come originally from Britain ; and even at this 
day, such as are desirous of being perfect in it, travel 
thither for instruction. The Druids never go to war ; 
are exempt from taxes and military service, and enjoy 
all manner of immunities. These mighty encourage- 
ments induce multitudes of their own accord to follow 
that profession, and many are sent by their parents. 
They are taught to repeat a great number of verses 
by heart, and often spend twenty years upon this in- 
stitution ; for it is deemed unlawful to commit their 
statutes to writing, though on other matters, private 
or public, they use Greek characters. They seem to 
have adopted this method for two reasons, — to hide 
their mysteries from the knowledge of the vulgar, and 
to exercise the memory of their scholars. It is one of 
their principal maxims, that the soul never dies, but 
after death, passes from one body to another. They 
teach likewise many things relative to the stars, the 
magnitude of the world and our earth, the nature of 
things, and the power and prerogative of the im- 
mortal gods. 

" The other order of men is the nobles, whose 
study and occupation is war. Before Caesar's arrival 
in Gaul, they were almost every year at war, offensive 
or defensive ; and they judge of the power and 
quality of their nobles, by the vassals and number of 
men they keep in pay. 

" The whole nation of the Gauls is extremely 
addicted to superstition, whence, in threatening dis- 
tempers, and the imminent danger of war, they make 
no scruple to sacrifice men, or engage themselves by 
vow to such sacrifices ; in which case, they make use 



24 PRIESTCRAFT 

of the ministry of the Druids ; for it is a prevalent 
opinion amongst them, that nothing but the life of 
man can atone for the life of man, insomuch that 
they have established even public sacrifices of this 
kind. Some prepare huge Colossuses of osier twigs, 
into which they put men alive, and setting fire to 
them, those within expire amongst the flames. They 
prefer for victims such as have been convicted of 
theft, robbery, or other crimes, believing them the 
most acceptable to the gods: but when such are 
wanting, the innocent are made to suffer. 

"The Gauls fancy themselves to be descended 
from the god Pluto, which, it seems, is an established 
tradition amongst the Druids ; and for this reason 
they compute time by nights, not by days. 

" The men have power of life and death over their 
wives and families ; and when any father of a family 
of illustrious rank dies, his relations assemble, and 
upon the least ground of suspicion, put even his wives 
to the torture, like slaves. Their funerals are magni- 
ficent and sumptuous, according to their quality. 
Everything that was dear to the deceased, even 
animals, are thrown into the fire ; and formerly, such 
of their slaves and clients that they loved most, 
sacrificed themselves at the funeral of their lords." 

In this valuable account, the striking resemblance 
of the Druids to the Brahmins, must impress every 
one, — not the least their funeral rites, and doctrine of 
metempsychosis. But there are some other things 
equally curious. We have here the Ban, — that 
tremendous ecclesiastical engine, which the Romish 
church most probably borrowed of the Goths ; and 
which we shall find it hereafter wielding to such 
appalling purpose. The tradition of the Druids, that 
they are descended of Pluto, is, too, a most remark- 
able circumstance ; agreeing so perfectly with the 



IN ALL AGES. 



25 



theory of Bryant, that they were Cuths, the descend- 
ants of Ham, the Pluto of mythology. 

Caesar proceeds to give Roman names to Gallic 
gods. This was the common practice of the Romans ; 
a fact, which, as it is known from other sources that 
the Druids never gave them such names, only proves 
that the Romans named them from their obvious 
attributes ; again confirming Bryant's theory, that 
however the ethnic gods be named, they are essen- 
tially identical. Caesar also adds, that the Germans 
differed widely from the Gauls, having no Druids, 
and troubling not themselves about sacrifices: but 
Tacitus, who is better evidence than Caesar, where 
the Germans are concerned, assures us that they had 
priests and bards. That "jurisdiction is vested in 
the priests ; it is theirs to sit in judgment on all 
offences. By them delinquents are put in irons, and 
chastised with stripes ; the power of punishing is in 
no other hands." He adds, "to impress on their 
minds the idea of a tutelar deity, they carry with 
them to the field of battle certain images and banners, 
taken from their usual depositaries, the groves ; and 
that one of these symbols was a ship — the emblem of 
Isis." This, from what we now know of mythologies, 
is a certain evidence of the eastern origin of their 
religion : — the ship being the ark, or ship of the 
world ; and Isis, the great mother of all things, the 
earth. He assures us that they had also human 
sacrifices. 

The last European country we will now notice, 
shall be Scandinavia. M. Mallet's most interesting 
antiquities of those regions were written before our 
eastern knowledge was so much enlarged, and before 
Mr. Bryant had promulgated his theory of the origin 
of paganism; and, therefore, when we come to open 
his volumes, we are proportionably astonished and 



26 PRIESTCRAFT 

delighted to find all the curious particulars he has 
collected of the Scandinavian gods and religious rites 
so absolutely confirmatory of that theory. Here 
again we have the same gods, under the different 
names of Odin, Thor, Loke, with Frigga or Frea, the 
goddess of the earth, the great mother. Here again 
we have the same dominant caste of priests reigning 
amid the same assemblage of horrors and pollution. 

The priests, he says, of these inhuman gods were 
called Drottes, a name equivalent to Druids. They 
were frequently styled prophets, wise men, divine men. 
At Upsal, each of the three superior deities had their 
respective priests, the principal of whom to the num- 
ber of twelve, presided over the sacrifices, and exer- 
cised an unlimited authority over every thing which 
seemed to have connexion with religion. The respect 
shewn to them was suitable to their authority. Sprung, 
for the most part, from the same family, like those of 
the Jews, they persuaded the people that this family 
had God himself for its founder. They often united 
the priesthood and the sovereignty in their own per- 
sons, after the example of Odin their progenitor. 
The goddess Frigga was usually served by kings' 
daughters, whom they called prophetesses and god- 
desses. These pronounced oracles ; devoted them- 
selves to perpetual virginity ; and kept up the sacred 
fire in the temple. The power of inflicting pains and 
penalties, of striking and binding a criminal, was 
vested in the priests alone ; and men so haughty that 
they thought themselves dishonoured if they did not 
revenge the slightest offence, would tremblingly sub- 
mit to blows, and even death itself, from the hand of 
a pontiff, whom they took for the instrument of an 
angry deity. In short, the credulity of the people, 
and the craft and presumption of the priests went so 
far, that these pretended interpreters of the divine 



IN ALL AGES. 27 

will, dared even to demand, in the name of heaven, 
the blood of kings themselves, and obtained it ! To 
succeed in this, it was requisite only for them to avail 
themselves of those times of calamity, when the 
people, distracted with fear and sorrow, laid their 
minds open to the most horrid impressions. At these 
times, while the prince was slaughtered at one of the 
altars of the gods, the others were covered with the 
offerings, which were heaped up on all sides for their 
ministers. 

But the general cause which regulated these sacri- 
fices, was a superstitious opinion, which made the 
northern natives regard the number three as sacred 
and peculiarly dear to the gods. Thus every ninth 
month they renewed this bloody ceremony, which was 
to last nine days, and every day they offered up nine 
victims, whether men or animals. But the most 
solemn sacrifices were those which were offered at 
Upsal in Sweden, every ninth year. Then the king, 
the senate, and all the principal citizens were obliged 
to appear in person, and to bring offerings, which 
were placed in the greatf temple. Those who could 
not come, sent their presents by others, or paid their 
value in money to priests, whose business it was to 
receive the offerings. Strangers flocked there in 
crowds from all parts, and none were excluded except 
those whose honour was stained, and especially such 
as had been accused of cowardice. Then they chose 
amongst the captives, in time of war, and amongst 
the slaves in time of peace, nine persons to be sacri- 
ficed. The choice was partly regulated by the 
opinion of by-standers, and partly by lot. The 
wretches upon whom it fell were then treated with 
such honours by all the assembly ; they were so 
overwhelmed with caresses for the present, and pro- 
mises for the life to come, that they sometimes con- 



28 PRIESTCRAFT 

gratulated themselves on their destiny. But they 
did not always sacrifice such mean persons. In great 
calamities, in a pressing famine, for example, if the 
people thought they had some pretext to impute the 
cause of it to the king, they sacrificed him without 
hesitation, as the highest price they could pay for 
the divine favour. In this manner the first king of 
Vermland was burnt in honour of Odin, to put away 
a great dearth. The kings in their turn did not spare 
the blood of their people ; and many of them even 
that of their children. Hacon, king of Norway, 
offered his son in sacrifice to obtain a victory over 
his enemy, Harold. Aune, king of Sweden, devoted 
to Odin the blood of his nine sons, to prevail on the 
god to prolong his life. The ancient history of the 
north abounds in similar examples. 

These abominable sacrifices were accompanied with 
various ceremonies. When the victim was chosen, 
they conducted him towards the altar, where the 
sacred fire was kept burning night and day. It was 
surrounded by all sorts of iron and brazen vessels. 
Among them one was distinguished by its superior 
size ; in this they received the blood of their victim. 
When they offered up animals, they speedily killed 
them at the foot of the altar ; then they opened their 
entrails and drew auguries from them, as among the 
Romans : but when they sacrificed men, those they 
pitched upon were laid upon a large stone, and 
quickly strangled or knocked on the head. Some- 
times they let out the blood, for no presage was more 
respected than that which they drew from the greater 
or less degree of impetuosity with which the blood 
gushed out. The bodies were afterwards burnt, or 
suspended in a sacred grove near the temple. Part 
of the blood was sprinkled upon the people, on the 
grove, on the idol, altar, benches and wall of the 
temple, within and without. 



IN ALL AGES. 29 

Sometimes the sacrifices were varied. There was 
a deep well in the neighbourhood of the temple ; the 
chosen person was thrown headlong in, commonly in 
honour of Goya, or the earth. If it went at once to 
the bottom, it had proved agreeable to the goddess ; 
if not, she refused it, and it was hung up in a sacred 
forest. Near the temple of Up sal there was a grove 
of this sort, every tree and every leaf of which was 
regarded as the most sacred thing in the world. This, 
which was named Odin's grove, was full of the bodies 
of men and animals which had been sacrificed. The 
temple at Upsal was as famous for its oracles as its 
sacrifices. There were also celebrated ones at Dalia, 
a province of Sweden, in Norway, and Denmark. It 
should seem that the idols of the gods themselves 
delivered the oracles viva voce. In an ancient Ice- 
landic chronicle, we read of one Indred, who went 
from home to wait for Thorstein, his enemy. Thor- 
stein, upon his arrival, went into the temple. In it 
was a stone, probably a statue, which he had been 
accustomed to worship. He prostrated himself before 
it, and prayed it to inform him of his destiny. Indred, 
who stood without, heard the stone chant forth these 
verses — " It is for the last time : it is with feet draw- 
ing near to the grave, that thou art come to this place, 
for it is most certain that before the sun riseth the 
valiant Indred shall make thee feel his hatred." 

The people persuaded themselves sometimes that 
these idols answered by a gesture, or nod of the head. 
Thus in the history of Olave Tryggeson, king of 
Norway, we see a lord, named Hacon, who enters into 
a temple, and prostrates himself before an idol which 
held in its hand a great bracelet of gold. Hacon, 
adds the historian, easily conceiving that so long as 
the idol would not part with the bracelet, it was not 
disposed to be reconciled to him, and having made 



30 PRIESTCRAFT 

some fruitless efforts to take the bracelet away, began 
to pray afresh, and to offer it presents ; then getting 
up a second time, the idol loosed the bracelet, and he 
went away very well pleased. 

But they had not only their bloody sacrifices, and 
their oracles, but their orgies of licentiousness. These 
occurred on the occasion of the feast of Frigga, the 
goddess of love and pleasure ; and at Uulel, the feast 
of Thor, in which the license was carried to such a 
pitch as to become merely bacchanalian meetings, 
where, amidst shouts, dancing, and indecent gestures, 
so many unseemly actions were committed as to 
disgust the wiser part of the community. 



IN ALL AGES. 



31 



CHAPTER V. 

NORTHERN INDIANS, MEXICANS, AND PERUVIANS. 



We have just seen that the same baleful superstitions 
extended themselves from the east to the very extremi- 
ties of Europe ; but we must now share in the aston- 
ishment of the discoverers of America, to find them 
equally reigning and rendering miserable the people 
there. A new world was found, which had been hid- 
den from the day of creation to the fifteenth Christian 
age ; yet there, through that long lapse of time, it 
was discovered, the same dominant spirit, and the 
same terrible system of paganism had been existing. 
The learned of Europe, on this great event, were 
extremely puzzled for a time, to conceive how and 
whence this distant continent had been peopled. The 
proven proximity of Asia at Behrings Straits, solved 
the mystery. But had not this become apparent, so 
identical are the superstitions, the traditions and 
practices of the Americans, with those of ancient 
Asia, that we might have confidently pronounced 
them to have come from that great seminary of the 
human race. 

The North- American Indians, who preserved both 
most of their liberty, their simplicity of life and of 
sentiment, worshipping only the Great Spirit, and 
refusing to have any image of deity ; having in 



32 PRIESTCRAFT 

general no priests, yet retained many, and very clear, 
traditions of the primeval world. So striking were 
these facts, combined with the Asiatic aspects of the 
Indians in their better days, before European oppres- 
sions and European vices had wasted and degraded 
them, that the early missionaries and visitants of 
America, Adair, Branaird, Charlevoix, nay, William 
Penn himself, were strongly persuaded that they had 
found the lost ten tribes of Israel. When they saw 
them carrying before them to battle an ark : saw them 
celebrating feasts of new moons, and heard them talk 
of the times when the angels of God walked upon 
earth with their ancestors ; talk of the two first 
people ; of the two first brothers, one of whom slew 
the other ; of the flood, and similar traditionary facts ; 
it is not wonderful that they should have adopted 
such a notion, — not perceiving, as we do now, that 
these are familiar features of the Asiatic nations ; and 
that though they did not prove them to be Hebrews, 
they did to a certainty prove them to be Asiatics. 

I must here passingly notice one inference, which 
seems unaccountably to have escaped the minds of 
antiquarians, connected with the peopling of this 
continent. In the North- American wilds, exist strange 
mounds and foundations of old fortifications, cairns, 
or burying-places, in which earthern vessels and other 
artificial remains are found, which prove that some 
people occupied these forests long before the present 
race of Indians ; a people who had more of the arts 
of civilized life amongst them than these ever pos- 
sessed. In certain caves of Kentucky, mummies have 
even been found. Now connecting these facts with 
the universal traditions of the Mexicans and South 
Americans, that they came originally from a country 
far to the north-west, does it not seem clear enough 
that these remains were the traces of the earlier 



IN ALL AGES. 33 

Asiatics who entered America, and who, if the same 
as the Mexicans and Peruvians, unquestionably 
possessed more of civilization and its arts than the 
northern tribes? — that other tribes more savage 
and warlike followed them ; and that they them- 
selves gradually sought fresh settlements, in ac- 
cordance with their own traditions. This simple 
theory seems to solve the problem which has so 
long puzzled both the European and American anti- 
quarians. 

The Natchez, who had advanced far before other 
tribes in their civil institutions, worshipped the sun, 
and maintained, like the Persians, the perpetual fire, 
his symbol, in their temples. They burnt, on the 
funeral pile of their chiefs, human victims ; giving 
them, according to M. Dumont, large piles of tobacco 
to stupify them, as the Brahmins intoxicate their 
victims to the same hideous custom. Ministers 
were appointed to watch and maintain the sacred 
fire : the first function of the great chief, every 
morning, was an act of obeisance to the sun ; and 
festivals, at stated periods, were held in his hon- 
our. Amongst the people of Bogota, the sun and 
moon were likewise the great objects of adoration. 
Their system of religion was more regular and com- 
plete, though less pure than that of the Natchez. 
They had temples, altars, priests, sacrifices, and that 
long train of ceremonies which superstition intro- 
duces, wherever she has fully established her influ- 
ence over the human mind. But the rites of their 
worship were bloody and cruel : they offered human 
victims to their deities, and nearly resembled the 
Mexicans in the genius of their religion. 

To the Mexicans and Peruvians we shall, indeed, 
principally confine our observations. These nations 
had grown to comparative greatness, and assumed a 

D 



I 



34 PRIESTCRAFT 

decided form of civil polity, and many of the rites of 
what is called civilized life ; and in such nations the 
combined power of kingcraft and priestcraft has been 
always found to be proportionably strong. In those 
conspicuous nations there were found all the great 
features of that superstition which they had brought 
with them from Asia, and which we have already 
seen spread and tyrannized over every quarter of the 
old world. They had their triads of gods ; their 
worship of the sun ; their worship of the evil and 
vindictive principle ; and worship of serpents. They 
had the same dominant caste of priests and nobles ; 
the same abject one of the common people ; human 
sacrifices ; the burning of slaves and dependants on 
the funeral pile ; they had the ark ; the doctrine of 
successive worlds ; and the patriarchal traditions. 

In the first place, their castes. — Robertson, on the 
authority of Herrera, says, — " In tracing the great 
lines of the Mexican constitution, an image of feudal 
policy rises to our view, in its most rigid form ; and 
we discern, in their distinguishing characters, a no- 
bility possessing almost independent authority ; a 
people depressed into the lowest state of dejection ; 
and a king entrusted with the executive power of the 
state. Its spirit and principles seem to have operated 
in the new world in the same manner as in the an- 
cient. The jurisdiction of the crown was extremely 
limited ; all real and effective authority was retained 
by the nobles. In order to secure full effect to these 
constitutional restraints, the Mexican nobles did not 
permit the crown to descend by inheritance, but dis- 
posed of it by election. The great body of the 
people was in a most humiliating state. A con- 
siderable number, known by the name of Mayeques, 
could not change their place of residence without 
permission of the superior to whom they belonged. 



IN ALL AGES. 35 

They were conveyed, together with the lands on 
which they were settled, from one proprietor to 
another ; and were bound to cultivate the ground, 
and perform several kinds of servile work. Others 
were reduced to the lowest form of subjection, that of 
domestic servitude, and felt the utmost rigour of that 
wretched state. Their condition was held to be so 
vile, and their lives deemed of so little value, that a 
person who killed one of them was not subjected to 
any punishment. Even those considered as freemen 
were treated by their haughty lords as beings of an 
inferior species. The nobles, possessed of ample 
territories, were divided into various classes, to each 
of which peculiar titles of honour belonged. The 
people, not allowed to wear a dress of the same 
fashion, or to dwell in houses of a form similar to 
those of the nobles, accosted them with the most 
submissive reverence. In the presence of their 
sovereign they durst not lift their eyes from the 
ground, or look him in the face. The nobles them- 
selves, when admitted to an audience, entered bare- 
footed, in mean garments, and, as slaves, paid him 
homage approaching to adoration. The respect due 
from inferiors to those above them in rank, was pre- 
scribed with such ceremonious accuracy, that it in- 
corporated with the language, and influenced its 
genius and idiom. The style and appellations used 
in the intercourse between equals, would have been 
so unbecoming in the mouth of an inferior to one of 
higher rank, that it would have been deemed an 
insult." 

What a lively picture of that system of domination 
in the few, and slavery in the multitude, which we 
have seen, or soon shall see, to have prevailed in all 
regions ; in the feudal lands of Europe ; in India 
and Egypt! and how perfect is the resemblance, 

d 2 



36 PRIESTCRAFT 

when we find, as we shall, that at the head of all 
these were the priests, who, says Faber, formed a 
regular hierarchy, and dwelt together in cloisters 
attached to their temples. So likewise in Peru, the 
royal family, that which constituted the nobility, 
w r ere viewed as an entirely distinct race by the abject 
plebeians : and they studiously preserved the purity 
of their high blood, by intermarrying solely amongst 
themselves. With these in the government of the 
commonalty were associated the priesthood, who, as 
in Mexico, were no straggling body, but a well- 
organized fraternity. 

With respect to their triads, the same author says, 
the Peruvians supposed Viracocha to be the creator 
of the gods : subordinate to him, they believed two 
triads ; connecting, like the natives of the eastern 
continent, the triple offspring of the great father with 
the sun ; and, as in the case of Jupiter, with the 
thunder. The first consisted of Chuquilla, Catuilla, 
and Intyllapa ; or the father- thunder, the son-thun- 
der, and the brother-thunder ; the second of Apomti, 
Churunti, and Inti-quaoqui ; as the father- sun, the 
son-sun, and the brother- sun. Nor were they satis- 
fied with these two principal triads. So strongly 
were they impressed with the notion of three deities 
inferior to that primeval god who sprung from the 
sea, that they had likewise three images of Chuquilla, 
himself a person of the first triad ; as the Persian 
Mythras was not only one with Oromasdes and 
Ahriman, but was also said to have triplicated him- 
self. They had also an idol Tangatanga, which they 
said was one-in-three and three-in-one. Added to 
these, they venerated, like the pagans of the eastern 
hemisphere, a great universal mother; and what 
shews further the genuine character of this great 
demiurgic man of the sea, Noah, the superior of their 



IN ALL AGES. 



37 



multiplied triad, the badge of the Inca, was a rain- 
bow and two snakes ; the one allusive to the deluge, 
the other the symbols of the two great parents of 
both gods and men. Purchas, in his Pilgrimage, 
quaintly calls this triad, an apish imitation of the 
Trinity brought in by the devil. Their worship was 
sufficiently diabolical, being debased with all the 
abominable impurities of the Arkite superstitions. 

Remarks not dissimilar might be made on the 
deity of the Mexicans, believed to be the creator of 
the world. They call him Mexitli, or Vitzliputzli. 
His image was seated on an azure- coloured stool, 
placed in a litter ; his complexion was also azure ; 
and in his hand he held an azure staff, fashioned in 
the shape of a waving serpent. Their next deity 
they named Tlaloc ; their third Tezcallipuca. Him 
they esteemed the god of repentance. As for the 
superior divinity of this triad, he was placed on a 
high altar, in a small box, decked with feathers and 
ornaments of gold ; and the tradition of the Mexicans 
was, that when they journeyed by different stations, 
from a remote country to the north-west, they bore 
this oracular image along with them, seated in a 
coffer made of reeds. Whenever they rested, they 
placed the ark of their deity on an altar ; and at 
length, by his special direction, they built their prin- 
cipal city in the midst of a lake. 

They went forwards, says Purchas, " bearing their 
idol with them in an ark of reeds, supported by four 
of their principal priests, with whom he talked, and 
communicated his oracles and directions. He like- 
wise gave them laws, and taught them the sacrifices 
and ceremonies they still observe. And even as the 
pillar of cloud and of fire conducted the Israelites in 
their passage through the wilderness, so this apish 
devil gave them notice when to advance and when to 
stay." 



38 PRIESTCRAFT 

Every particular of this superstition shews its dilu- 
vian origin; and proves the supposed demiurge to 
be no other than the great father. The ark of Mexitli 
is the same machine as that in which the Hammon, 
or Osiris of Egypt was borne in his procession ; the 
same as the ark of Bacchus ; the ship of Isis, and the 
Argha of Iswara. His dark complexion is that of 
the Vishnu of the Indian, and Cneph of the Egyptian 
triads. He was oracular, like the ship Argo of the 
Greeks ; the Baris of Hammon ; the chief arkite 
gods of all Gentile nations. He connects his city 
with a lake, like the ancient Cabiri, like that of 
Buto on the lake Chemmis in Egypt; and has evi- 
dent connexion with the lake and floating islands of 
all the pagan mythologies. 

It is a curious circumstance, that we find the doc- 
trine of the succession of worlds, and of the death 
and revival of the hero-gods, also amongst the Mexi- 
cans. They doubtless brought it out of eastern Asia, 
with a mythology which is substantially the same as 
that of the larger continent, agreeably to their stand- 
ing tradition respecting the route of their ancestors. 
They supposed the world to have been made by the 
gods, but imagined that since the creation, four suns 
have successively appeared and disappeared. The 
first sun perished by a deluge; the second fell from 
heaven when there were many giants in the country : 
the third was consumed by fire; the fourth was 
dissipated by a tempest of wind. Three days after 
the last sun became visible, all the former gods died : 
then, in process of time, were produced those whom 
they have since worshipped. This resemblance to 
the tradition of the Hindoos, is striking enough, as 
well as to that of the Egyptians, who told Herodotus 
that the same sun had four times deviated from his 



IN ALL AGES. 39 

course, having twice risen in the west, and twice set 
in the east. 

When the Mexicans brought their arkite god out 
of Asia, they also brought with him the ancient 
mysteries of that deity. Like the idolaters whom 
they had left behind, they sacrificed on the tops of 
mountains in traditional commemoration of the sacri- 
fice on Ararat ; and adored their bloody gods in dark 
caverns, similar to those of the worship of Mythras. 
Their orgies, like all the other orgies of the Gentiles, 
appear to have been of a peculiarly gloomy and 
terrific nature ; sufficient to strike with terror, even 
the most undaunted hearts. Hence their priests, in 
order that they might be enabled to go through the 
dreadful rites without shuddering, anointed them- 
selves with a peculiar ointment, and used various 
fantastic ceremonies to banish fear. Thus prepared, 
they boldly sallied forth to celebrate their nocturnal 
rites in wild mountains and the deep recesses of 
obscure caves, much in the same manner as the 
nightly orgies of Bacchus, Ceres, and Ceridwen were 
celebrated by their respective nations. A similar 
process enabled them to offer up those hecatombs of 
human victims, by which their blood-stained super- 
stition was more eminently distinguished than even 
those of Moloch, Cali, Cronus, or Jaggernath. They 
had also their vestal virgins ; and both those women 
and the priests were wont frantically to cut them- 
selves with knives, while engaged in the worship of 
their idols, like the votaries of Baal and Bellona. 

Of their bloody sacrifices, the Spanish writers are 
full; particularly Herrera, Acosta, and Bernal Diaz. 
Fear, says those authors, was the soul of the Mexican 
worship. They never approached their altars without 
sprinkling them with blood, drawn from their own 



40 PRIESTCRAFT 

bodies. But of all offerings, human sacrifices were 
deemed the most acceptable. This belief, mingling 
with the spirit of vengeance, added more force to it ; 
every captive taken in war was brought to the temple, 
and sacrificed with horrid cruelties. The head and 
the heart were devoted to the gods : the body was 
carried off by the warrior who took the captive, to 
feast himself and his friends. Hence, the spirit of 
the Mexicans became proportionally unfeeling ; and 
the genius of their religion so far counteracted the 
influence of policy and arts, that, notwithstanding 
their progress in both, their manners, instead of 
softening, became more fierce. Those nations in the 
New World, who had made the greatest progress in 
the arts of social life, were, in several respects, the 
most ferocious ; and the barbarity of their actions, 
exceeded even those of the savage state. 

The Spanish writers have been charged with ex- 
aggerating the number of human victims annually 
sacrificed by the Mexicans. Gomara says, there was 
no year in which twenty thousand were not immo- 
lated. The skulls of those unhappy persons were 
ranged in order, in a building erected for that pur- 
pose ; and two of Cortes's officers who had counted 
them, told Gomara they amounted to a hundred and 
thirty six thousand, flerrera declares that five and 
twenty thousand have been sacrificed in one day. 
The first bishop of Mexico, in a letter to the chapter- 
general of his order, states the annual average at 
twenty thousand. On the other hand, Bernal Diaz 
asserts that the Franciscan monks, who were sent 
into New Spain, immediately after the conquest, 
found, on particular inquiry, that they did not exceed 
annually two thousand five hundred. Probably the 
numbers varied with the varying circumstances of war 
and other occurrences ; but from all authorities, it 



IN ALL AGES. 



41 



appears that their bloody rites were carried to an 
enormous extent. 

But enough of these terrible and revolting trophies 
of priestcraft. We might follow the course of this 
pestilence into Africa and the South Sea Isles ; but I 
shall rather choose to refer all those who may be 
curious on the subject, to the narratives of our tra- 
vellers and missionaries, in which they will see the 
same causes operating the same effects. I prefer to 
give a concluding page or two in this chapter, to the 
vivid picture of priestcraft which Mr. Southey has 
drawn in his noble poem of Madoc. No man has 
felt and described the true spirit of this terrible race 
of men more forcibly than Mr. Southey. His Madoc 
was a Welch prince, who, according to Cambrian 
tradition, first discovered America, and there settled 
with a colony of his countrymen. On this founda- 
tion Mr. Southey has formed one of his most delight- 
ful poems ; full of nature, of the working of strong 
affections, and of the spirit of the subject. 

Madoc discovers land, and falls in with a native 
who had fled from his country to avoid being sacri- 
ficed by the priests. This youth, Lincoya, leads 
Madoc to his native land, where he is soon introduced 
to Erillyab, the widowed queen, who sits before her 
door, near the war-pole of her deceased husband ; — 
a truly noble woman. Madoc, in his own narrative, 
says,— 

She welcomed us 
With a proud sorrow in her mien ; fresh fruits 
Were spread before us, and her gestures said 
That when he lived whose hand was wont to wield 
Those weapons, — that in better days, — that ere 
She let the tresses of her widowhood 
Grow wild, she could have given to guests like us 
A worthier welcome. Soon a man approached, 
Hooded with sable ; his half-naked limbs 
Smeared black : the people at his sight drew'round • 



I 



42 PRIESTCRAFT 

The women wailed and wept'; the children turned 

And hid their faces in their mothers' knees. 

He to the queen addressed his speech, then looked 

Around the children, and laid hands on two 

Of different sexes, but of age alike, 

Some six years old, who at his touch shrieked out. 

But then Lincoya rose, and to my feet 

Led them, and told me that the conqueror claimed 

These innocents for tribute ; that the priest 

Would lay them on the altar of his god, — 

Tear out their little hearts in sacrifice, 

Yea, with more cursed wickedness himself, 

Feast on their flesh. 

Madoc defends the children ; sends away the dis- 
appointed priest ; and, in consequence, gets into war 
with the Azticas, the powerful tribe which has seized 
upon Aztlan, the city of the Hoamen, the people of 
queen Erillyab. He soon, however, obliges them 
to come to terms ; to renounce their bloody rites, 
and, having put things into a fair train, returns to 
Europe for fresh stores and emigrants. In his 
absence, the priests of Aztlan, according to the wont 
of all priests, stir up the king of Aztlan again to 
war. They cry, if not exactly " Great is Diana of 
the Ephesians," great is Mexitli of the Azticas. 
They pretend to hear voices and see prodigies ; they 
pretend the gods cry out for the blood of their enemies, 
and forebode all manner of destruction from them, 
if they be not appeased. Madoc does but just arrive 
in time to save his colony. A desperate war is com- 
menced ; an occasion is given for the full display of 
the reckless atrocity, the perfidy, and vile arts of the 
priests, and for many noble and touching incidents 
arising out of the contact of better natures with the 
casualties of battle and stratagem. Hoel, a child, 
the nephew of Madoc, is carried off, at the instigation 
of the priests, to be sacrificed. Madoc in following 
his captives, falls himself into an ambush, and is 



IN ALL AGES. 43 

doomed a victim to Mexitli; but escapes through a 
national custom of allowing a great warrior to fight 
for his life at the altar-stone, by the timely arrival 
of his friends, and by the assistance of a native 
maiden, to whom also Hoel owes his rescue from the 
den of Tlaloc, where he was left to starve. The 
Azticas are defeated, and finally abandon their terri- 
tory, going onward and founding Mexico : calling it 
after the name of their chief deity. 

To quote all the passages which seem especially 
made for our purpose, would fill this volume ; but I 
must select one or two. The description of the idol : 

On a huge throne, with four huge silver snakes 
As if the keeper of the sanctuary 
Circled, with stretching neck and fangs displayed, 
Mexitli sate ; another graven snake 
Belted with scales of gold his monstrous bulk. 
Around his neck a loathsome collar hung 
Of human hearts ; the face was masked with gold ; 
His specular eyes seemed fire ; one hand upreared 
A club, the other, as in battle, held 
The shield ; and over all suspended hung 
The banner of the nation. 
The chief priest, Tezozomoc, when about to pre- 
sent little Hoel to the idol, and the child, terrified 
at his hideous appearance, shrieks and recoils from 
him : — 

His dark aspect, 
Which nature with her harshest characters 
Had featured, art made worse. His cowl was white ; 
His untrimmed hair, a long and loathsome mass, 
With cotton cords entvvisted, clung with gum, 
And matted with the blood which every morn 
He from his temples drew before the god, 
In sacrifice ; bare were his arms, and smeared 
Black ; but his countenance a stronger dread 
Than all the honors of that outward garb 
Struck, with quick instinct, to young Hoel's heart. 
It was a face whose settled sullenness 
No gentle feeling ever had disturbed : 
Which when he probed a victim's living breast, 
Retained its hard composure. 






44 PRIESTCRAFT 

The whole work is alive with the machinations, 
arts, and fanatic deeds of the priesthood. The king 
of the Azticas, in an early conference with Madoc, 
says, speaking of the priests, — 

Awe them, for they awe me : 

and his queen, after he has been killed in battle, and 
she is about to perish on his funeral pile, calls out to 
his brother and successor, — 

Take heed, O king ! 
Beware these wicked men ! They to the war 
Forced my dead lord. . . Thou knowest, and I know, 
He loved the strangers ; that his noble mind, 
Enlightened by their lore, had willingly 
Put down these cursed altars ! As she spake 
They dragged her to the stone . . . Nay : nay ! she cried, 
There needs not force ! I go to join my lord ! 
His blood and mine be on you ! Ere she ceased, 
The knife was in her breast. Tezozomoc, 
Trembling with wrath, held up toward the sun 
The reeking heart. 

When the war is terminated, Madoc declares, 

No priest must dwell among us, — that hath been 
The cause of all this misery ! 

And that, indeed, has been the cause of at least 
half the miseries in the world, as I shall hereafter 
shew. With this sentiment let us close this chapter. 



IN ALL AGES. 45 



CHAPTER VI. 

EGYPT. 



We have now traversed an immense space of country, 
and of time ; and found one great uniform spirit of 
priestcraft, one uniform system of paganism, presiding 
over and oppressing the semi-barbarous nations of 
the earth ; it remains for us to inquire whether the 
three great nations of antiquity, Greece, Egypt, and 
India, so early celebrated for their science, philoso- 
phy, and political importance, were affected by the 
same mighty and singular influence; and here we 
shall find it triumphing in its clearest form, and ex- 
isting in its highest perfection. 

The priest-ridden condition of Egypt is notorious 
to all readers of history. Lord Shaftesbury calls it, 
"the motherland of superstitions." So completely 
had the lordly and cunning priesthood here contrived 
to fix themselves on the shoulders of the people, so 
completely to debase and stupify them with an over- 
whelming abundance of foolish veneration, that the 
country swarmed with temples, gods, and creatures, 
which, in themselves most noxious, or loathsome, 
were objects of adoration. Juvenal laughs at them, 
as making gods of their onions ; growing gods in 
their garden-beds by thousands — 

O sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascunter in hortis 
Numina ! 

and dogs, cats, lizards, and other creatures were 



46 PRIESTCRAFT 

cherished with extraordinary veneration. Diodorus 
Siculus says, that a Roman soldier having by accident 
killed a cat, the common people instantly surrounded 
his house with every demonstration of fury. The 
king's guards were immediately dispatched to save 
him from their rage, but in vain ; his authority and 
the Roman name were equally unavailing. 

The accounts we possess, of the extreme populous- 
ness of ancient Egypt ; of the number and splendour 
of their temples ; of the knowledge and authority of 
their priests ; and the mighty remains of some of 
their sacred buildings, sufficiently testify to the 
splendour and absolute dominance of this order in 
this great kingdom. 

To shew that the priestcraft of this ancient realm 
was part of the same system that we have been 
tracing, a part of that still existing in India, will 
require but little labour. We shall see that the 
Greek philosophers themselves assert the derivation 
of their mythology from Egypt ; and so strikingly 
similar are those of India and Egypt, that it has 
been a matter of debate amongst learned men, which 
nation borrowed its religion from the other. The 
fact appears to be, that neither borrowed from the 
other, but that both drew from one common source, a 
source we have already pointed out — that of the 
Cuthic tribes. Egypt was peopled by the children 
of Ham : and by whomsoever India was peopled, the 
great priestly and military caste early found its way 
there, and introduced the very same superstitions, 
founded on the worship of Noah and his sons ; and 
shadowed out with emblems and ceremonies derived 
from the memory of the flood. Both nations are of 
the highest antiquity ; both arrived at extraordinary 
knowledge of astronomy, of architecture, of many of 
the mechanic arts, of government, and of a certain 



IN ALL AGES. 47 

moral and theologic philosophy, which the priests 
retained to themselves, and made use of as a mighty 
engine to enslave the people. Their knowledge was 
carefully shrowded from the multitude ; the populace 
were crammed with all sorts of fabulous puerilities ; 
and were made to feel the display of science in the 
hands of the priesthood, as evidence of supernatural 
powers. 

Dr. Robertson, in his Disquisition on Ancient 
India, and in his History of America, has endeavoured 
to explain the uniformity of pagan belief, by sup- 
posing that rude nations would everywhere be in- 
fluenced by the same great powers and appearances 
of nature ; — by the beneficial influence of the sun 
and moon; of the fruitful earth ; by the contemplation 
of the awfulness of the ocean, of tempests, and thun- 
der ; and would come to adore those great objects as 
gods. But this will, by no means, account for the 
striking identity of the great principles and practices 
of paganism, as w r e have seen them existing. Differ- 
ent nations, especially under the different aspects of 
widely divided climates, would have imagined widely 
different deities ; and the ceremonies in which they 
would have adored them, w T ould have been as infinite 
as the vagaries of the human fancy. But would they 
have all produced gods so positively of the same 
family, that, whoever went from one nation to another, 
however distant, amongst people of totally different 
habits and genius, would have immediately recognized 
their own gods, and have given them their own 
names ? Would Caesar and Tacitus have beheld 
Roman gods in Germany and Gaul ? Herodotus, 
Pluto, and Pythagoras, have found those of Greece 
in Egypt ? Would these gods be, in every country, 
attended by the same traditionary theory of origin,— 
the three sons of one great father, multiplying them- 



48 PRIESTCRAFT 

selves into the eight persons of the original gods — 
the precise number of those enclosed in the ark ? 
Would traditions of the flood in all countries, most 
full and remarkable, and, in the oldest Hindoo 
writings, almost word for word with the one in the 
Bible, have existed, as may be seen in the histories of 
the various countries ; and as may be found carefully 
collected by Faber and Bryant in their works on the 
pagan mythologies ? This could not be ; — nor would 
so many nations, in different parts of the world, 
retain the ark ; nor celebrate mysteries, substantially 
the same, in the same terrific manner in caves ; nor 
would they have all hit on the horrid sacrifice of men ; 
nor the same doctrine of transmigration; nor have 
permitted an imperious caste of priests and nobles to 
rule over them with absolute domination. To sup- 
pose all this to happen, except from one great and 
universal cause, is as rational as to suppose the 
system of earth and heaven to be the work of chance : 
and the farther we go, the more clearly shall we see 
this demonstrated. 

The Egyptians, like all other nations, had their 
triad of gods ; — Horus, Osiris, and Typhon. This 
was the popular one ; but the priests had another 
of a more intellectual nature, Emeph, Eicton, and 
Phtha. They had also their great mother Isis, 
Ceres, or the earth : but they had besides many in- 
ferior deities, which we need not enumerate. Every 
god had his shrine ; every shrine its train of priests ; 
besides which there were the shrines of the oracles, 
so that there was plenty of influence and profit for 
the priesthood. They bore the ark of Osiris once a 
year in procession ; setting it afloat on the Nile at a 
certain place, and lamenting it for a time as lost. It 
was taken up at another place, with great rejoicings 
that the god was found again. It was said to be 



IN ALL AGES. 49 

pursued by the great evil serpent Typhon in the 
ocean ; but, in time was triumphant over him — a 
direct allusion to the going of Noah into the ark, 
and being driven by the great power of waters for a 
time ; when he returned to land, and peopled the 
world anew. 

Their doctrine of transmigration, Herodotus tells 
us, some of his countrymen, whom he could name but 
does not choose (meaning, however, Pythagoras and ' 
others), carried thence into Greece. The Egyptians, 
says the venerable Greek, believe that, on the disso- 
lution of the body, the soul immediately enters into 
some other animal ; and that, after using as vehicles 
every species of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged crea- 
tures, it finally enters a second time into a human 
body. They affirm that it undergoes all these 
changes in the space of three thousand years. 

This is precisely the doctrine of the Hindoos, and 
of those nations we have already noticed ; and hence 
proceeded that excessive veneration of the people for 
every species of animal ; fearing to hurt or destroy 
them, lest they should dislodge the soul of a relative 
or friend. We have noticed their fury about a cat : 
their veneration for dogs was equally extreme till 
after the celebrated expedition of Cambyses, the 
Persian, who, with the zeal of his country against all 
images of deity, threw down their idols, and slew their 
sacred animals, which the dogs devoured, and thereby 
became objects of abhorrence to the Egyptians. 

Their laws, says Herodotus, compel them to che- 
rish animals. A certain number of men and women 
are appointed to this office, which is esteemed so 
honourable that it descends in succession from father 
to son. In the presence of these animals the 
inhabitants of the cities perform their vows. They 
address themselves as supplicants to the divinity 

E 



50 PRIESTCRAFT 

which is supposed to be represented by the animal 
in whose presence they are. They then cut off their 
childrens' hair ; sometimes the whole ; sometimes 
the half; at others a third. This they weigh in a 
balance against a piece of silver. As soon as the 
silver preponderates, they give it to the woman 
who keeps the beast. It is a capital offence to kill 
one of these animals. To destroy one accidentally 
is punishable by a fine paid to the priests ; but he 
who kills an ibis or a hawk, however involunta- 
rily, cannot by any means escape death. When- 
ever a cat dies there is universal mourning in a 
family ; and every member of it cuts off his eye- 
brows : but when a dog dies, they shave their heads 
and every part of their bodies. This, after the days 
of Cambyses, would, of course, be somewhat altered. 
The cats, when dead, are carried to sacred buildings, 
salted, and afterwards buried in the city of Bubastes. 
Female dogs are buried in sacred chests, wherever 
they happen to die, as are ichneumons ; shrew-mice 
and hawks are buried at Butos ; bears and wolves 
where they die. Otters and eels also excited great 
veneration. The crocodile was held to be divine by 
one part of the kingdom ; by another it was exe- 
crated. Where it was reverenced, it had temples, a 
large train of attendants, and, after death, was em- 
balmed. Maximus Tyrius says, a woman reared a 
young crocodile, and the Egyptians esteemed her 
highly fortunate as the nurse of a deity. The woman 
had a child which used to play with the crocodile, 
till the animal one day turned fierce, and ate it up ; 
the woman exulted, and counted the child's fate 
blessed in the extreme, to have been the victim of 
her domestic god. Such is the melancholy stupidity 
into which priestcraft can plunge the human mind ! 
I shall not pursue the superstitions of this people 



IN ALL AGES. 51 

farther, but refer my readers to Herodotus, Plu- 
tarch, Diodorus, and Porphyrius, for all further par- 
ticulars ; except to state that the Egyptians, were we 
to credit Herodotus, were singular in one respect — 
having no human sacrifices, save, perhaps, in the 
very earliest ages. This, however, is so remarkable 
an exception to the universality of the system, that 
we find it difficult of belief; and, on turning to 
Strabo, we are assured that they annually sacrificed 
to the Nile a noble virgin ; a statement confirmed by 
the Arabian writer, Murtadi, who relates that they 
arrayed her in rich robes, and hurled her into the 
stream. Diodorus affirms, that they sacrificed red- 
haired men at the tomb of Osiris, because his mortal 
enemy, Typhon, was of that colour. Busiris sacri- 
ficed Thracians to appease the angry Nile ; and three 
men were daily sacrificed to Lucina at Heliopolis ; 
instead of which Amasis afterwards humanely sub- 
stituted waxen images. 

They not only practised these horrors, but the 
Phallic rites in all their loathsomeness ; and en- 
grafted a vulgar and indecent character on the na- 
tional manners. They propagated the abominations 
of Priapis, and the Bacchanalian and Saturnalian 
orgies amongst the Greeks. The priests had so fast 
bound the people in the strongest bonds — knowledge 
in their own order, and ignorance in the multitude ; in 
puerile forms and ceremonies, and the serpent-folds of 
sensuality; that they had established themselves in 
the most absolute manner on their shoulders. Rome 
and India can alone present similar examples. 

As we have seen in all other countries, so here 
they were the lordly caste. The nation, say the 
authorities I have above quoted, is divided into three 
castes — priests, nobles, and people ; the latter of 
whom are confined to mechanic or rural emplov- 

e 2 






52 PRIESTCRAFT 

ments, utterly excluded from knowledge, advance- 
ment, and power. As in India to this day, the son 
must succeed his father in his trade. " I know 
not," says Herodotus, " whether the Greeks have 
borrowed this custom from them, but I have seen the 
same thing in various parts of Thrace, Scythia, Per- 
sia, and Lydia. It seems, indeed, to be an estab- 
lished prejudice amongst nations, even the least 
refined, to consider mechanics and their descendants 
as the lowest sort of citizens, and to esteem those 
most noble who are of no profession. The soldiers 
and the priests are the only ranks in Egypt which 
are honourably distinguished ; these, each of them, 
receive from the public a portion of land of twelve 
acres, free from all taxes : besides this, the military 
enjoy, in their turn, other advantages ; one thousand 
are every year, in turn, on the king's guard, and 
receive, besides their land, a daily allowance of five 
pounds of bread, two of beef, and four austeres of 
wine." 

Plato, Plutarch, and Diodorus agree with him in 
this particular. A prince, say they, cannot reign in 
Egypt if he be ignorant of sacred affairs. The king 
must be either of the race of priests or soldiers ; these 
two classes being distinguished, the one by their 
wisdom, the other by their valour. When they have 
chosen a warrior for king, he is immediately admitted 
into the order of priests, who instruct him in their 
mysterious philosophy. The priests may censure 
the king ; give him advice ; and regulate his actions. 
By them is fixed the time when he shall walk, bathe, 
or even visit his wife. The sacred ministers possess, 
in return, many and great advantages. They are not 
obliged to consume any part of their domestic pro- 
perty ; each has a moiety of sacred viands, ready 
dressed, assigned him, besides a large daily allowance 
of beef, and geese, and wine. 



IN ALL AGES. 53 

What a striking illustration is this of what we find 
in Genesis, cap. xlvii. v. 22, of the doings of Joseph, 
who adopted a policy towards the Egyptians more 
despotic than one would have expected from his 
patriarchal character ; or from a simple Canaanitish 
shepherd — first of gathering up the corn from all the 
land of Egypt, and then selling it out, in the horrors 
of famine, to the people for their possessions, whereby 
the whole kingdom became the purchased property of 
Pharaoh, except that of the priests — " only the land 
of the priests bought he not, for the priests had a 
portion assigned them of Pharaoh." 

The priests, indeed, were too powerful for Joseph, 
or even for Pharaoh himself. Darius wished only to 
place a statue of himself in a temple ; the priests 
violently resisted it, and Darius was obliged to sub- 
mit. Herodotus tells us that the priests shewed him 
the images of their predecessors for three hundred 
and forty-one descents : and M. Larcher even sup- 
poses that these priests were, for many ages, the sole 
princes of this strange country ; a most triumphant 
reign of priestcraft indeed! Let us now turn to 
Greece. 



54 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER VII. 

GREECE. 



The popular theology of this noble and celebrated 
nation, as it existed during its most enlightened ages, 
has been made familiar to every mind by its literature 
being taught in all schools, and furnishing perpetual 
allusions and embellishments to all writers. Herodotus 
says that Hesiod and Homer invented the theogony 
of Greece ; that is, they, no doubt, methodized the 
confused traditions of their ancestors, and organized 
them into that very beautiful system, which we still 
admire, when it has become the most fabulous of 
fables, more than the kindred creations of all other 
people. Though it had the same origin as all other 
mythologies, yet, passing through the glorious minds 
of these poets, it assumed all those characters of 
grace and beauty which they conferred on their litera- 
ture, their philosophy, and on all the arts and embel- 
lishments of life. Familiar as Homer has made us 
all with that hierarchy of gods which figure so con- 
spicuously in his writings, we are continually fur- 
nished by him with glimpses of a more ancient dy- 
nasty, and with theories of their origin, which clash 
with his more general one, and at first puzzle and 
confound us. When we come, however, to trace up 
these casual revealings, we soon find ourselves in a 
new world. These gods, which he at first taught us 
were all the offspring of Saturn, and of his three sons 



IN ALL AGES. 55 

Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, we discover, to our 
astonishment, are the gods of all other nations, — 
gods assuming all the character of the highest anti- 
quity, and deriving their being in, a manner totally at 
variance with the more modern system. His Her- 
cules, Bacchus, Apollo, Ceres, Venus, &c, instead of 
being the comparatively recent children of Jove, are 
found to blend and become synonimous with him or 
the great Mother. Surprised at this strange disco- 
very, we pursue the inquiry, and are led into those 
very regions where we have lately been — into central 
Asia, and to the period of the Flood. The tombs of 
the gods were existing in Greece ; they were, there- 
fore, but deified men, — and whence came these men ? 
From the Flood. Traditions of floods were the most 
familiar of things in Greece ; and they agreed, both 
that of Deucalion and others, with all the particulars 
of the real one. Herodotus tells us that the Egyp- 
tians, into whose religion he was initiated, invented 
the names of the twelve great gods ; but we have al- 
ready seen whence the Egyptians drew their deities. 
Plutarch contends that they came from Phoenicia. 
And who were the gods of the Phoenicians ? Ilus, or 
Ark-llus, or Hercules, i.e. Noah ; and Dagon ; the 
old man, On, or Oannes, who, according to Sanco- 
niatho, came out of the sea, and taught them to 
plant corn and the vine. Others say, that the gods 
came into Greece from Samothrace, with the Pelasgi, 
an ancient wandering people, who bore in an ark with 
them the Cabiri, or mighty ones. These Cabiri have 
been the subject of much contention ; but all writers 
admit that they were three, or eight, that is, the three 
sons of Noah, or the eight people of the ark. It is 
most likely that from all these sources portions of the 
same great system of corrupted worship were derived. 
So conspicuous is the real origin of all the Grecian 



56 PRIESTCRAFT 

traditions, that I shall not dwell upon it. It is enough 
to state that they celebrated the same mysteries, prac- 
tised the same human sacrifices, were contaminated 
with the same Phallic abominations, as all the other 
nations of paganism ; in fact, all the characters of the 
great Noachic superstitions were engrafted upon them. 
The bold and free genius of the nation ; that splendid 
and extraordinary emanation of intellect, which not 
only made it the wonder of the ancient world, but 
has constituted it the well-spring of knowledge to 
all ages, and almost the creator of the universal mo- 
dern mind, saved it from the utmost horrors and 
degradations of priestcraft. The national spirit ope- 
rating in the soul of Homer, again through him 
operated with tenfold force on the minds of his coun- 
trymen. In all other countries the priests were the 
monopolists of knowledge. " Immured," says Mau- 
rice, in his Indian Antiquities, " in the errors of 
Polytheism, as was the great body of the Egyptian 
nation, it has been incontestibly proved by the im- 
mortal Cudworth, that the hierophant, or arch-priest, 
in the secret rites of their religion, taught the doctrine 
of the unity of the Godhead ; but this noble senti- 
ment, though they had the magnanimity to conceive, 
they wanted the generosity to impart to the deluded 
populace ; for it was thought dangerous both to the 
church and state, to shake the foundations of the 
reigning superstitions." This, if I have not already 
shewn, it would be easy to shew, was the practice 
the world over ; but this knowledge falling on the 
mind of Homer, he disdained to make it an instru- 
ment of slavery, but poured it abroad like light 
through the earth ; and his countrymen, listening to 
his glorious poems with enthusiasm, became imbued 
with the same dauntless, untameable spirit, alike in- 
tolerant of the despotism of the throne or the altar. 






IN ALL AGES. 57 

Many of his more timid compatriots, indeed, were 
terrified at the freedom of his treatment of the gods. 
Everywhere we perceive that he regarded them but as 
convenient poetical machinery. Ever and anon we find 
him rising into such sublime notions of Deity and the 
Divine government, that we feel that he possessed 
that true knowledge of the Creator which Socrates 
and Plato, and Cicero, in Rome, afterwards displayed. 
So strikingly, indeed, does he evince this, that many 
have thought that in his wanderings he had come in 
contact with the Hebrew doctrines. I doubt this. I 
believe, rather, it came to him from the earliest ages, 
by other sources ; but, be it as it may, his description 
of the gods exerting their power is almost worthy of 
Isaiah. 

Mars shouts to Simois from his beauteous hill : 
The mountain shook, the rapid stream stood still. 
Above, the sire of gods his thunder rolls, 
And peals on peals redoubled rend the poles. 
Beneath, stern Neptune shakes the solid ground ; 
The forests wave, the mountains nod around : 
Through all their summits tremble Ida's woods, 
And from their sources boil her hundred floods. 
Troy's turrets totter on the rocking plain, 
And the tossed navies beat the heaving main. 

Popes Translation, B. xx. 

The sentiments that abound in the Odyssey are 
worthy, not merely of a Hebrew, but of a Christian ; — 
as this fine and just opinion of slavery : — 

Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day 

Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away. — B. xviii. 

This noble description of the power of conscience : — 

Pirates and conquerors of hardened mind, 
The foes of peace, and scourges of mankind, 
To whom offending men are made a prey, 
When Jove in vengeance gives a land away : 



58 PRIESTCRAFT 

Even these, — when of their ill-got spoils possessed, 
Find sure tormentors in the guilty breast ; 
Some voice of God, close whispering within — 
" Wretch ! this is villany ; and this is sin!" 

And those many declarations of God's guardian- 
ship of the poor and the stranger : — 

'T is Jove unfolds our hospitable door ; 

*T is Jove that sends the stranger and the poor. — B. xiv. 

Let first the herald due libations pay 

To Jove, who guides the wanderer on his way* — B. vii. 

By Jove the stranger and the poor are sent, 
And what to them we give, to Jove is lent. 

Low at thy knee, thy succour we implore ; 

Respect us human, and relieve us poor ; 

At least some hospitable gifts bestow, 

'T is what the happy, to the unhappy owe. 

'Tis what the gods require :— those gods revere, — 

The poor and stranger are their constant care. 

To Jove their cause, and their revenge belongs — 

He wanders with them, and he feels their wrongs.— B. ix. 

From Homer's mind, truth glanced abroad with a 
divine and dreadless honesty; unlike that of poor 
Herodotus, who at the utterance of a bolder senti- 
ment, hopes he has not given offence to gods or men. 

We see in his writings not only continual indica- 
tions of great moral truths, but the same integrity 
evinced in sketching the manners of the early ages of 
his country. We see his favourite hero dragging his 
noble foe at his chariot, and immolating men at the 
funeral of his friend. What Greece would have been 
in the hands of priests, but for its own elastic spirit, 
and for the mighty influence of its poets and sages, 
we have seen pictured in other nations ; what it was, 
we have now to see. Priestcraft here did not rule 
with the same unmasked mien, and unrestrained 
hand, as in other countries; — it adapted its policy to 



IN ALL AGES. 59 

the spirit of the people. It gratified their curiosity- 
after philosophic knowledge, and after the future, by 
mysteries and oracles ; their love of grace and festivity, 
by beautiful processions and joyous festivals ; it 
captivated and awed their sensitive imaginations, by 
calling to its aid the fine arts, as the papal church did 
afterwards by its adherents, — erecting the most mag- 
nificent temples, and setting before their eyes those 
miracles of paintings now lost, except in the eulo- 
giums of antiquity ; and of sculpture, some of which 
remain to command the admiration, if not the worship 
of the world. By these means they attained their 
end, — immense wealth and influence, — an influence, 
the strength of which, on the common mind, may be 
estimated by facts about to be given, but perhaps 
more by the circumstance of Socrates, the most 
sagacious of their philosophers, at the hour of his 
death, and when he was delivering the most sublime 
sentiments, enjoining his friends to sacrifice on his 
behalf, a cock to iEsculapius. 

Let us now briefly run over the great features of 
priestcraft in Greece; and first, of human sacrifices. 
Archbishop Potter, in his Antiquities of Greece, 
chap, iv., says, " Neither was it lawful to sacrifice 
oxen only, but also men. Examples of this sort of 
inhumanity were very common in most of the bar- 
barous nations. Among the primitive Grecians it 
was accounted an act of so uncommon cruelty and im- 
piety, that Lycaon, king of Arcadia, was feigned by 
the poets to have been turned into a wolf, because he 
offered a human sacrifice to Jupiter. In latter days 
it was undoubtedly more common and familiar. 
Aristomenes, the Messinian, sacrificed three hundred 
men ; among whom was Theopompus, one of the 
kings of Sparta, to Jupiter of Ithome. Themistocles, 
in order to procure the assistance of the gods against 



60 PRIESTCRAFT 

the Persians, sacrificed some captives of that nation, 
as we find in Plutarch. Bacchus had an altar in 
Arcadia, upon which young damsels were beaten to 
death with bundles of rods ; something like to which 
was practised by the Lacedemonians, who scourged 
the children, sometimes to death, in honour of Diana 
Orthia. To the Manes and infernal gods, such 
sacrifices were very often offered. Hence we read of 
Polyxena's being sacrificed to Achilles ; and Homer 
relates how that hero butchered twelve Trojan cap- 
tives at the funeral of Patroclus. iEneas, whom 
Virgil celebrates for his piety, is an example of the 
same practice : — 

Sulmone creatos 
Quatuor hie juvenes, totidem, quos educat Ufens, 
Viventes rapit ; inferias quos immolet umbris, 
Captivoque rogi perfundat sanguine flammas. — Lib. x. 

"Whoever desires to see more instances of human 
sacrifices, may consult Clemens of Alexandria, Euse- 
bius, and other Christian apologists." 

To this, we may add the well-known sacrifice of 
Iphygenia, by the assembled Grecian powers on their 
way to Troy ; the sacrifice of two children by Mene- 
laus, related by Herodotus, and what Plutarch says, 
that the Greeks sacrificed many children annually to 
Saturn; so that we see this famous people was 
sufficiently infected by this bloody superstition. 

Of their Phallic rites we shall, for decency's sake, 
say no more than refer to their own writers, whose 
descriptions of the Bacchic and Priapic orgies, are 
astonishing. 

For their religious festivals and processions ; we 
refer to Potter; and shall only say that in these, every 
charm of grace, every intoxication of festivity was 
exhausted, to fascinate a people so alive to such 



IN ALL AGES. 61 

influences ; and they were made to contribute abund- 
antly to the coffers of the priests. 

Another potential source of power and wealth was 
augury. Augurs were a class of men frequently 
priests, but always bearing much the same relation to 
the pagan priesthood, that the monks did to those of 
the papal hierarchy. They were but varieties of the 
same class of animals of prey. They pretended to 
discern and declare the will of the gods, by the flight 
of birds, by the intestines of animals, and by various 
other signs ; but it was through the medium of the 
oracles that priestcraft awed, and practised on, the 
public mind most effectually. These were situated 
in solemn temples, or fearful, sacred groves ; were 
surrounded by everything which could terrify and 
confound the imagination ; and, accompanied by dread 
and mysterious sounds, and by the cries and con- 
tortions of the priest or priestess, were supposed to 
proclaim the dicta of the gods. They were, con- 
sequently, a mine of wealth and power to the priests. 
" Of all sorts of divination," says Potter, " oracles 
had always the greatest repute, as being thought to 
proceed in an immediate manner from the gods ; 
whereas, others were delivered by men, and had a 
greater dependence on them, who might, either out 
of ignorance, mistake, or out of fear, hope, or other 
unlawful and base ends, conceal, or betray the truth ; 
whereas, they thought the gods, who were neither 
obnoxious to the anger, nor stood in need of the 
rewards, nor cared for the promises of mortal, could 
not be prevailed upon to do either of them. Upon 
this account, oracles obtained so great credit and 
esteem, that, in all doubts and disputes, their deter- 
minations were held sacred and inviolable. Whence, 
as Strabo reports, vast numbers flocked to them to 
be resolved in all manner of doubts, and to ask 



62 PRIESTCRAFT 

counsel about the management of their affairs ; inso- 
much, that no business of great consequence was 
undertaken ; scarce any war waged, peace concluded, 
new form of government instituted, or new laws 
enacted, without the advice and approbation of an 
oracle. Croesus, before he durst venture to declare 
war against the Persians, consulted not only all the 
most famous oracles of Greece, but sent ambassadors 
to Lybia, to ask advice of Jupiter Hammon. Minos, 
the Cretan lawgiver, conversed with Jupiter, and 
received instructions from him, how he might new- 
model his government. Lycurgus also made visits to 
the Delphian Apollo, and received from him that 
platform which he afterwards communicated to the 
Lacedemonians. Nor does it matter whether these 
things were true or not, when lawgivers, and men of 
the greatest authority, were forced to make use of 
these methods to win them into compliance. My 
author also goes higher, and tells us that inspired 
persons were thought worthy of the greatest honour 
and trusts : insomuch, that we sometimes find them 
advanced to the throne, and invested with the royal 
power ; — for that, being admitted to the councils of 
the gods, they were best able to provide for the wel- 
fare of men. 

" This representation stood the priests, who had 
their dependence on the oracle, in no small stead ; 
for finding their credit thus thoroughly established, 
they allowed no man to consult their gods before he 
had offered costly sacrifices, and made rich presents 
to them. Whereby it came to pass that few besides 
great and wealthy men were admitted to ask their 
advice ; the rest being unable to pay the charges re- 
quired on that account, which contributed very much 
to raise the esteem of oracles among the common peo- 
ple ; men being generally apt to admire the things they 



IN ALL AGES, 63 

are kept at some distance from, and, on the other 
hand, to contemn what they are familiarly acquainted 
with. Wherefore, to keep up their esteem with the 
better sort, even they were only admitted on a few 
stated days : at other times, neither the greatest 
prince could purchase, nor persons of the greatest 
quality any way obtain an answer. Alexander him- 
self was peremptorily denied by the Pythia, till she 
was by downright force compelled to ascend the 
tripos, when, finding herself unable to resist any 
longer, she cried out, ' Thou art invincible ! ' which 
words were thought a very lucky omen, and accepted 
instead of a further oracle." 

Thus we see how artfully and triumphantly the 
priests had managed to enslave this great and most 
intelligent of people, holding them in abject and utter 
thraldom even while they imagined themselves free. 
To the priests they were obliged to come for their 
original civil constitutions, and these they took care 
so to frame as to make themselves necessary in every 
act and hour of existence, as they have done through 
the universal world. Our author might have told us 
however, what tricks statesmen were suffered to play 
with the oracles when it suited them so to do ; he 
might have added what prodigies and portents The- 
mistocles caused to appear in these oracular temples, 
when he wished to rouse the Greeks against Persia. 
The arms of the temple at Delphi were shifted from 
the interior to the front of the fane in the night, as 
if done by divine hands ; they were heard to clash 
as if by invisible power ; rocks fell, and thundered 
down in the faces of the enemy as they approached 
these sacred defiles, and friends and foes were im- 
pressed with an idea that the gods were present to 
defend their sanctuaries. . These and similar facts he 
might have told us ; — but let us proceed. 



64 PRIESTCRAFT 

Their sacred festivals, games, and celebration of 
mysteries, we have already heard were almost innu- 
merable ; some occurring yearly, others monthly, so 
that they were seldom without something of the kind 
to occupy their attention, and bind them to the na- 
tional religion. To their mysteries only can we 
devote a few passages. 

These have occupied much 'of the curiosity of the 
learned ; and their researches have shewn incon- 
testibly, that the mysteries celebrated in all ages and 
nations were substantially the same. Whether they 
were celebrated in Egypt, in honour of Isis and 
Osiris ; in Syria of Baal ; in Phrygia, in Crete, in 
Phenicia, in Lemnos, in Samothrace, in Cypress, in 
India, or the British Isles ; or in the Mythratic caves 
of Persia ; they had all the same object, and were 
attended by the same ceremonies. In Greece there 
might be differing particulars in the orgies of Bac- 
chus, Ceres, Jupiter, Pan, Silenus, Rhea, Venus, or 
Diana, yet their leading traits were the same. Their 
objects have been stated variously ; but they appear, 
in fact, to have been various, yet all subservient to 
one great object, — which was, to teach the primal 
unity of the Deity, notwithstanding the popular mul- 
titude of gods, and to shadow out the grand doctrine 
of the fall and repurification of the human soul. They 
appear evidently derived from the flood; repre- 
senting a descent into the darkness of that death 
which Noah's entrance into the ark indicated to the 
world, and his subsequent return to life. In all, 
there was a person lost, and sought after with lamen- 
tation ; whether Isis was seeking Osiris, Ceres seek- 
ing Proserpine ; or Thammuz, Bacchus, Pan, Jupiter, 
or some other, was lamented with tears, and sought 
through terrors, and afterwards rejoiced in as found. 
In all, the aspirants descended to darkness as of 



IN ALL AGES. 65 

death, passed over a water in an ark or boat, and 
came into Elysium. The accounts in Homer and 
Virgil of the descent of Hercules, Ulysses and 
iEneas, into hell, are considered to be but details of 
what is represented in the mysteries. In whatever 
mode they were celebrated, we invariably find a 
certain door or gate, viewed as of primary import- 
ance. Sometimes it was the door of the temple ; 
sometimes the door of the consecrated grotto ; some- 
times it was the hatch- way of the boat within 
which the aspirant was enclosed ; sometimes a hole, 
either natural or artificial, between rocks ; and some- 
times a gate in the sun, moon, or planets. Through 
this the initiated were born again ; and from this the 
profane were excluded. The notion evidently origi- 
nated from the door in the side of the ark through 
which the primary epopts were admitted, while the 
profane antediluvians were shut out. So sacred and 
secret were these mysteries in all countries, that 
whoever revealed any portion of them was instantly 
put to death. The scrupulosity of the Romans with 
regard to the orgies of the Bona Dea, at which women 
only were admitted, is familiar to every reader of 
Cicero, by his harangue against Clodius, who violated 
this custom. Those who consulted the oracle of 
Trophonius had to pass through darkness, and de- 
scend by a ladder into the cave, with offerings of 
cakes of honey ; and drank of the waters of oblivion 
to forget all past cares, and of the waters of remem- 
brance, to recollect what they were about to see. 

They who had been initiated into the mysteries were 
held to be extremely wise, and to be possessed of mo- 
tives to the highest honour and purity of life ; yet it 
cannot be denied that they were made, by the intro- 
duction of the Phallic obscenities, a means as much 
of debauchery as of refining the people. A little 

F 



66 PRIESTCRAFT 

reflection, says Mr. Maurice, will soon convince us, 
that as persons of either sex were promiscuously 
allowed to be initiated, when the original physical 
cause came to be forgotten, what a general dissipa- 
tion — what a boundless immorality, would be pro- 
moted by so scandalous an exhibition as awaited 
them. The season of nocturnal gloom in which these 
mysteries were performed, and the inviolable secresy 
which accompanied the celebration of them, added to 
the inviting solitude of the scene, conspired at once to 
break down all the barriers of restraint, to overturn 
all the fortitude of manly virtue, and to rend the veil 
of modesty from the blushing face of virgin innocence. 
At length licentious passion trampled upon the most 
sacred obstacles which law and religion united to 
raise against it. The bacchanal, frantic with mid- 
night intemperance, polluted the secret sanctuary, 
and prostitution sate throned upon the very altars of 
the gods. 

The effect upon the vulgar multitude cannot be 
doubted, however different it might be upon the few 
of higher intellect and higher pursuit. By them the 
most sublime portions of the ancient mysteries would 
be awfully felt. Nothing can be conceived more 
solemn than the rites of initiation into the greater 
mysteries as described by Apuleius and Dion Chry- 
sostome, who had both gone through the awful cere- 
mony, — nothing more tremendous than the scenery 
exhibited before the eyes of the terrified aspirant. 
After entering the grand vestibule of the mystic 
shrine, he was led by the hierophant, amid surround- 
ing darkness and incumbent horrors, through all 
those extended aisles, winding avenues, and gloomy 
adyta, equally belonging to the mystic temples of 
Egypt, Eleusis, and India. " It was," says Sto- 
bseus, as quoted by Warburton, in his Divine Lega- 
tion of Moses, "a wide and fearful march through 



IN ALL AGES. 67 

night and darkness. Presently the ground began to 
rock beneath his feet, the whole temple trembled, and 
strange and dreadful voices were heard through the 
midnight silence. To these succeeded other louder 
and more terrific noises, resembling thunder ; while 
quick and vivid flashes of lightning darted through 
the cavern, displaying to his view many ghastly 
sights and hideous spectres, emblematical of the va- 
rious vices, diseases, infirmities, and calamities, inci- 
dent to that state of terrestrial bondage from which 
his struggling soul was now going to emerge, as well 
as of the horrors and penal torments of the guilty in 
a future state. The temple of the Cecropian goddess 
roared from its inmost recesses ; the holy torches of 
Eleusis were waved on high by mimic furies ; the 
snakes of Triptolemus hissed a loud defiance, and the 
howling of the infernal dogs resounded through the 
awful gloom, which resembled the malignant and 
imperfect light of the moon when partially obscured 
by clouds. At this period, all the pageants of vulgar 
idolatry — all the train of gods, supernal and infernal, 
passed in awful succession before him ; and a hymn, 
called the Theology of Idols, recounting the gene- 
alogy and functions of each, was sung : afterwards 
the whole fabulous detail was solemnly recanted by 
the mystagogue ; a divine hymn, in honour of Eter- 
nal and Immutable Truth, was chanted, and the 
profounder mysteries commenced. And now, arrived 
on the verge of death and initiation, everything wears 
a dreadful aspect ; it is all horror, trembling, and 
astonishment. An icy chilliness seizes his limbs ; a 
copious dew, like the damp of real death, bathes his 
temples ; he staggers, and his senses begin to fail, 
when the scene is of a sudden changed, and the doors 
of the interior, and splendidly illumined temple are 
thrown wide open. A miraculous and divine light 

f 2 



68 PRIESTCRAFT 

discloses itself, and shining plains, and flowering 
meadows open on all hands before him. 'Accessi 
confinium mortis,' says Apuleius, ' et calcato Proser- 
pinae limine, per omnia vectus elementa remeavi; 
nocte medio solem candido coruscantem rumine.' 
Arrived at the bourn of mortality, after having trod 
the gloomy threshold of Proserpine, I passed rapidly 
through all the surrounding elements, and, at deep 
midnight, beheld the sun shining in meridian splen- 
dour. The clouds of mental error, and the shades of 
real darkness being now alike dissipated, both the 
soul and the body of the initiated experienced a de- 
lightful vicissitude ; and, while the latter, purified 
with lustrations, bounded in a blaze of glory, the for- 
mer dissolved in a tide of overwhelming transport. 
At that period of virtuous and triumphant exaltation, 
according to the divine Plato, they saw celestial 
beauty in all the dazzling radiance of its perfection ; 
when, joining with the glorified chorus, they were 
admitted to the beatific vision, and were initiated into 
the most blessed of all mysteries." 

The author of the apocryphal Wisdom of Solo- 
mon has preserved a most curious Jewish tradition, 
relative to the nature of the Egyptian plague of 
darkness, which intimates that the votaries of Osiris 
were visited with the very terrors which they em- 
ployed in his mysteries. The passage is not only 
strikingly illustrative of what is gone before, but is 
extremely sublime. — 

"When unrighteous men thought to oppress the 
holy nation, they, being shut up in their houses, the 
prisoners of darkness and fettered with the bonds of 
a long night, lay there, fugitives from the Eternal 
Providence. For, while they were supposed to lie 
hid in their secret sins, they were scattered under a 
dark veil of forgetfulness, being horridly astonished, 
and troubled with strange apparitions. For, neither 



IN ALL AGES. 69 

might the corner that held them keep them from fear, 
but noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about 
them, and sad visions appeared unto them with heavy 
countenances. No power of the fire might give them 
light, neither could the bright flames of the stars 
endure to lighten that horrible night. Only there ap- 
peared unto them a fire kindled of itself, very dread- 
ful ; for being much terrified, they thought the things 
they saw to be worse than the sight they saw not. 
As for the illusions of art magic, they were put 
down, and their vaunting in wisdom was reproved 
with disgrace ; for they who promised to drive away 
terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick them- 
selves of fear, worthy to be laughed at. For though 
no terrible thing did fear them, yet, being scared with 
beasts that passed by, and hissing of serpents, they 
died for fear, refusing to look upon the air, which 
could on no side be avoided ; they sleeping the same 
sleep that night, wherein they could do nothing, and 
which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevit- 
able hell, were partly vexed with monstrous appa- 
ritions, and partly fainted, their heart failing them 
— for sudden fear, and unlooked-for, came upon them. 
So, then, whosoever fell down, was straitly kept, 
shut up in a prison without iron bars. Whether it 
were a whistling wind or a melodious noise of birds 
among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of 
water running violently, or a hideous noise of stones 
cast down, or a running that could not be seen of 
skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage 
wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow 
mountains ; these things made them to swoon for 
fear. For the whole world shined with light, and 
none were hindered in their labour ; over them only 
was spread a heavy night, an image of that darkness 
which should afterwards receive them." 

On this interesting subject it would be easy to fol- 



70 PRIESTCRAFT 

low through the mysteries of all nations, and write a 
volume ; but after merely stating that the initiatory 
ceremonies of Freemasons, and those of the Vehme 
Gericht, or secret tribunal, once existing in Germany, 
seem to derive their origin from this source, I shall 
merely give a few words of Taliesin, relative to their 
celebration in Britain, and return to the regular order 
of my subject. 

Among the apparatus of the art magic which the 
Druids used in this ancient ceremony of being born 
again, was a cauldron ; and, as in all other mysteries, 
and in the initiation of a Freemason, men with 
naked swords stood within the portal to cut down 
every coward who would fain turn back before he 
had passed through the terrors of inauguration; the 
Druids also, it appears, had to sail over the water in 
this ceremony. 

" Thrice the number," says Taliesin, " that would 
have filled Prydwen (the magic shield of Arthur, in 
which he sailed with seven champions), we entered 
upon the deep, — excepting seven, none have returned 
from Caer Sidi. Am I not contending for the praise 
of that lore w T hich was four times reviewed in the 
quadrangular enclosure ? As the first sentence, was 
it not uttered from the cauldron ? Is not this the 
cauldron of the ruler of the deep ? With the ridge 
of pearls around its border, it will not boil the food 
of a coward who is not bound by his oath. Against 
him will be lifted the bright-gleaming sword, and in 
the hand of the sword-bearer shall he be left ; and 
before the gates of hell shall the horns of light be 
burning. "When we went with Arthur in his splen- 
did labours, excepting seven, none returned from 
Caer Vediwid. Am I not contending for the honour 
of a lore which deserves attention ? In the quad- 
rangular enclosure, in the island with the strong door, 
the twilight and the pitchy darkness were mixed 



IN ALL AGES. 71 

together, while bright wine was the beverage placed 
before the narrow circle. Thrice the number that 
would have filled Prydwen we embarked upon the 
sea ; — excepting seven, none returned from Caer 
Rigor. I will not redeem the multitudes with the 
ensign of the governor. Beyond the enclosure of 
glass they beheld not the prowess of Arthur. They 
knew not on what day the stroke would be given, 
nor at what hour in the serene day the agitated per- 
son would be born, or who preserved his going into the 
dales of the possession of the waters. They knew 
not the brindled ox with the thick headband. When 
we went with Arthur of mournful memory, except- 
ing seven, none returned from Caer Vandwy." 

Caer Rigor, Sidi, Vediwid, etc., are but different 
names for the Druidical enclosure of Stonehenge, or, 
as they styled it, the Ark of the World. The num- 
ber seven have evidently reference to the seven per- 
sons of the ark; Noah himself being represented, 
according to custom, by Arthur. 

In another place Taliesin alludes to the doctrine 
of the Metempsychosis, which was taught in those 
mysteries. " I was first modelled in the form of a 
pure man, in the hall of Ceridwen (the ship god- 
dess), who subjected me to penance. Though small 
within my ark and modest in my deportment, I was 
great. A sanctuary carried me above the surface 
of the earth. Whilst I was enclosed within its ribs 
the sweet awen rendered me complete : and my law, 
without audible language, was imparted to me by 
the old giantess darkly smiling in her wrath ; but her 
claim was not regretted when she set sail. I fled in 
the form of a fair grain of pure wheat ; upon the 
edge of a covering cloth she caught me in her fangs. 
In appearance she was as large as a proud mare, 
which she also resembled (the Ceres- Hippa of the 
Greeks, who similarly received Bacchus into her 



72 PRIESTCRAFT 

womb) ; then was she swelling-out, like a ship upon 
the waters. Into a dark receptacle she cast me. 
She carried me back into the sea of Dylan. It was 
an auspicious omen to me when she happily suffo- 
cated me ; God, the Lord, freely set me at large." 

To a timid aspirant, the hierophant says, "Thy 
coming without external purity, is a pledge that I 
will not receive thee. Take out the gloomy one. 
Out of the receptacle which is thy aversion, did I 
obtain the rainbow." — See Davis's Celtic Mythology. 

It may seem widely wandering from Greece to 
Britain ; but it only shews more strikingly the one- 
ness of the Pagan faith. And now to return. 

The priests, thus providing for the tastes of all par- 
ties, wealth, power, and unlimited influence became 
their own. All these things were sources of gain ; and 
whoever would form some idea of the wealth of the 
Grecian priesthood, let him read in Herodotus of the 
immense riches conferred on the oracular temples by 
Croesus and other monarchs. Let him also learn the 
following particulars from Diodorus Siculus: "The 
principal hoards of treasure, both in bullion and 
coined money, were in their temples, which were 
crowded with presents of immense value, brought by 
the superstitious from every part of Greece. These 
temples were considered as national banks ; and the 
priests officiated as bankers, — not always, indeed, the 
most honest, as was once proved at Athens, where 
the state treasurers, having expended or embezzled 
the public money, had the audacity to set fire to that 
part of the temple of Minerva where the treasure 
was contained ; by which sacrilegious act that mag- 
nificent fane was near being wholly consumed. Their 
purpose, however, was fully answered, since the re- 
gisters of the temple were reported to have perished 
with the treasures, and all responsibility precluded." 

The temple just mentioned, the superb fane of 



IN ALL AGES. 73 

Jupiter Olympius, at Elis, and that of Apollo at 
Delphi, were the principal of the three sacred deposi- 
tories. The priests at all times concealed the total 
sum of the treasures lodged in them with too much 
caution for us to know the amount ; yet, when the 
Phocenses, urged to despair by the exactions of the 
Thebans, seized on the treasures of Delphi, they 
amounted to 10,000 talents — above 2,250, 000£. ster- 
ling — and probably that was but a small portion of 
what holy perfidy had previously secured. The 
deposits at the great temple of Ephesus, considered 
through all ages as inviolable, probably far exceeded 
those of the three last mentioned. 

The spirit of avarice, which in all times character- 
ized the priesthood, and prompted them to such 
immense accumulation, is not more detestable than 
dangerous ; for, let any one reflect what must be the 
consequence to a nation where the monarch and the 
priest are in coalition, as is usually the case, and the 
monarch, as is usually the case too, is watching to 
extinguish every spark of popular freedom ; — what, I 
say, must be the consequence when such over- 
whelming resources are within his reach ? The fate 
of Greece is a melancholy warning on the subject. 
These immense treasures were eventually seized 
upon by rapacious conquerors, and their soldiers paid 
by them to enslave these renowned states ; and thus 
the coin drained from the people by the hands of 
priestcraft, became in the hands of kingcraft, the 
means of their destruction. So has it been in every 
country. So was it in Palestine — so in ancient 
Rome — in Constantinople ; and so pre-eminently in 
India. To that country let us now proceed. 



74 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER VITI. 



INDIA. 



The ancient and venerable Hindostan furnishes our 
last and most triumphant demonstration of the nature 
of pagan priestcraft. In Greece we have seen that, 
notwithstanding the daring, restless, and intellectual 
character of the people, it contrived to obtain a most 
signal influence ; but in India, with a people of a 
gentler temperament, and where no bold spirits, like 
Homer and the philosophers of Greece, had ventured to 
make the national theology popularly familiar, priest- 
craft assumed its most fearless and determined air. In 
all other lands it did not fail to place itself in the first 
rank of honour and power ; in this it went a step 
further, — and promulgating a dogma diametrically op- 
posite to the humanizing doctrine of the Bible, that, 
" God made of one blood all the nations of the 
earth ;" it riveted its chains indissolubly on the 
mind of that mighty empire. Priestcraft here ex- 
hibits a marvellous spectacle. The perfection of its 
craft, and the utter selfishness of its spirit, are pro- 
claimed by the fact of millions on millions bound, 
from the earliest ages to the present hour, in the 
chains of the most slavish and soul- quelling castes, 
and in the servility of a religious creed so subtilly 
framed, that it almost makes hopeless the moral rege- 
neration of the swarming myriads of these vast regions. 
I have already repeatedly stated that it partakes, in 



IN ALL AGES. 75 

common with the whole pagan world, in one general 
mythological system, and I shall not dwell on its 
features more particularly. In Maurice's copious 
Indian Antiquities, whence I shall chiefly draw what 
I have to say, may be found ample details of 
the Hindoo religion. It is well known, from a 
variety of works, that this venerable empire claims 
the highest antiquity, not merely of national exist- 
ence, but of the possession of knowledge in philo- 
sophy, literature, and the arts ; it is equally known, 
too, since Sir William Jones laid open the antique 
stores of the Sanscrit language, that this religion has 
all the common features of those mythologies, on 
which I have already dwelt. It has its triad of 
gods, its doctrine of Metempsychosis, its practice of 
the Phallic licentiousness, and the horrors of human 
sacrifice and self-immolation. Who has not heard 
of the burning of Indian widows — of the bloody and 
wholesale self- slaughter at the temple of Jaggernath 
— of the destruction of children, now restrained by 
British interference — and of the absolute dominance 
of the Brahmins ? I shall pass, therefore, hastily 
over these matters, and confine myself principally to 
the task of displaying, in the Brahminical hierarchy, 
an example of priestcraft in its most decided, undis- 
guised, subtle, and triumphant character, — priest- 
craft, at once in full flower and full fruit ; in that 
state at which it has always aimed, but never, not 
even in the bloody reign of the Papal church, ever 
attained elsewhere, — stamping itself on the heart of a 
great nation in its broadest and most imperishable 
style, in all its avowed despotism, icy selfishness, im- 
perturbable pride, and cool arrogance of fanatical power. 
Two great sects exist here, — those of Buddh and 
Brahma, which preserve an inviolable separation, 
except in the temple of Jaggernath, where, seeming 



76 PRIESTCRAFT 

to forget all their former prejudices, they unite in 
the commission of lust and cruelty. 

It is to the Brahminical sect, as the most predomi- 
nant, that I shall principally confine my remarks. 
These profess the mildest of doctrines, refuse to kill 
any living creature for food, and subsist on milk, 
fruit, and vegetables. Yet, what is at first sight 
most remarkable, and what cannot be accounted for 
by any other means than that of the immutable 
nature of corrupted religion, they not only inflict on 
themselves, under the character of Yogees, the most 
horrible austerities ; but have for ages encouraged the 
destruction of female children ; do to the present time 
encourage, and under the influence of the most 
powerful social causes, render almost necessary the 
immolation of widows; sanction and stimulate, an- 
nually, thousands of simple victims to destroy them- 
selves at the shrine of the monstrous Jaggernath ; 
and, till recently, sacrificed, not only animals but men. 

Of human sacrifices, the express ordination of the 
Rudhiradhyaya, or sanguinary chapter of the Calica 
Purana, in the fifth volume of the Asiatic Researches, 
is sufficient testimony. No precepts can be con- 
ceived more express, nor, indeed, more horrible, than 
those which this tremendous chapter enjoins. 

" By a human sacrifice, attended with the forms 
here laid down, Deva, the goddess Cali, the black 
goddess of destruction, is pleased 1000 years. 

" By a human sacrifice, Camachya, Chandica, and 
Bhairava, who assume any shape, are pleased 1000 
years. An oblation of blood which has been ren- 
dered pure by holy texts, is equal to ambrosia ; the 
head and flesh also afford much delight to Chan- 
dica. Let, therefore, the learned, when paying ado- 
ration to the goddess, offer blood and the head ; and 
when performing the sacrifice to fire, make oblations 
of flesh." 



IN ALL AGES. 77 

Here follow numerous minute directions, none of 
which I shall quote, except one ; — itself sufficiently 
horrid. 

" Let the sacrificer say, Hrang, hring ! Cali, Cali ! 
O, horrid-toothed goddess ! eat, cut, destroy all the 
malignant ; cut with this axe ; bind, bind ; seize, 
seize ; drink blood ! spheng, spheng ! secure, secure ! 
salutations to Cali!" 

For the Phallic contaminations, let this pasage 
from Maurice suffice. Abundant matter of the like 
nature might be added; but the less said on this 
subject the better. Of the recent existence of such 
things, Buchanan's account of the temple of Jagger- 
nath may satisfy the curious reader. 

" What I shall offer on this head will be taken 
from two authentic books, written at very different 
periods, and therefore fully decisive as to the general 
prevalence of the institution from age to age, — the 
Anciennes Relations, and Les Voyages de M. Ta- 
vernier, — the former written in the 9th, the latter in 
the 17th century. 

" Incited, unquestionably, by the hieroglyphic em- 
blems of vice so conspicuously elevated and strik- 
ingly painted in the temple of Mahadeo, the priests 
of that deity industriously selected the most beautiful 
females that could be found, and, in their tenderest 
years, with great pomp and solemnity, consecrated 
them, as it is impiously called, to the service of the 
divinity of the pagoda. They were trained in every 
art to delude and delight ; and, to the fascination of 
external beauty, their artful betrayers added the 
attractions arising from mental accomplishments. 
Thus was an invariable rule of the Hindoos, that 
women have no concern with literature, dispensed with 
on this infamous occasion. The moment these hap- 
less creatures reached maturity, they fell victims to 



78 PRIESTCRAFT 

the lust of the Brahmins. They were early taught 
to practise the most alluring blandishments, to roll 
the expressive eye of wanton pleasure, and to invite 
to criminal indulgence by stealing upon the beholder 
the tender look of voluptuous languishing. They 
were instructed to mould their elegant and airy forms 
into the most enticing attitudes, and the most las- 
civious gestures, while the rapid and most graceful 
motion of their feet, adorned with golden bells and 
glittering with jewels, kept unison with the exquisite 
melody of their voices. Every pagoda has a band of 
these young syrens, whose business on great festivals 
is to dance in public before the idol, to sing hymns in 
his honour, and in private to enrich the treasury of the 
pagoda by the wages of prostitution. These women 
are not, however, regarded in a dishonourable light ; 
they are considered as wedded to the. idol, and they par- 
take the veneration paid to him. They are forbidden 
ever to desert the pagoda where they are educated, 
and are never permitted to marry ; but the offspring, 
if any, of their criminal embraces, are considered 
sacred to the idol: the boys are taught to play on 
the sacred instruments used at the festivals ; and the 
daughters are devoted to the abandoned occupation 
of their mothers. 

" The reader has, doubtless, heard and read fre- 
quently of the degeneracy and venality of Priests ; 
and we know from Herodotus, what scandalous pros- 
titutions were suffered in honour of Mylitta; but a 
system of corruption, so systematical, so deliberate, 
and so nefarious, — and that professedly carried on in 
the name, and for the advantage of religion, — stands 
perhaps unrivalled in the history of the world, and 
the annals of infamy. It was by degrees that the 
Eleusinian worship arrived at the point of its extreme 
enormity; and the obscenities, finally prevalent,, 



IN ALL AGES. 79 

were equally regretted and disclaimed by the insti- 
tutors ; but in India we see an avowed plan of shame- 
less seduction and debauchery: the priest himself 
converted into a base procurer; and the pagoda itself 
a public brothel. The devout Mahometan traveller, 
whose journey in India, in the ninth century, has 
been published by M. Renaudot, and from which 
account this description is partly taken, concludes 
the article by a solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty, 
that he and his nation were delivered from the errors 
of infidelity, and were unstained by the enormities of 
so criminal a devotion." 

In a country so immensely rich, and so obedient 
to the dictations of priestcraft, the avarice of the 
sacerdotal tribe would accumulate enormous treasures. 
We have recently alluded to the hordes gathered by 
priestly hands into the temples of Greece. In the 
temple of Belus in Assyria, there were three prodi- 
gious statues, not of cast, but of beaten gold, of 
Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea. That of Jupiter was erect, 
in a walking attitude; forty feet in height; and 
weighed a thousand Babylonian talents. The statue 
of Rhea was of the same weight, but sitting on a 
throne of gold, with two lions standing before her, 
and two huge serpents in silver, each weighing thirty 
talents. Juno was erect; weighed eight hundred 
talents; her right hand grasped a serpent by the 
head, and her left a golden sceptre, encrusted with 
gems. Before these statues stood an altar of beaten 
gold, forty feet long, fifteen broad, and five hundred 
talents in weight. On this altar stood two vast 
flagons, each weighing thirty talents ; two censers for 
incense, each five hundred talents ; and, finally, three 
vessels for the consecrated wine, weighing nine hun- 
dred talents. 

The statue of Nebuchadnezzar, in the plain of 



80 PRIESTCRAFT 

Dura, formed of the gold heaped up by David and 
Solomon, Dr. Prideaux calculated at one thousand 
talents of gold, in value three millions and a half 
sterling. 

Herodotus tells us, that Croesus frequently sent to 
Delphi amazing presents; and burnt, in one holo- 
caust, beds of gold and silver, ornamental vessels of 
the same metals, purple robes, silken carpets, and 
other rich furniture, which he consumed in one pile, 
to render that oracle propitious ; while the wealthiest 
citizens of Sardis threw into the fire their most costly 
furniture : so that out of the melted mass, one hun- 
dred and seventeen golden tiles were cast; the least, 
three spans long, the largest six, but all one span in 
thickness; which were placed in the temple. 

When Cambyses burnt the temple of Thebes in 
Egypt, there were saved from the flames three 
hundred talents of gold, and two thousand three 
hundred talents of silver ; and amongst the spoils 
of that temple was a stupendous circle of gold, in- 
scribed with the Zodiacal characters, and astrono- 
mical figures, which encircled the tomb of Oxymandias. 
At Memphis he obtained still greater sacred wealth. 

These seem astounding facts ; but before the sacer- 
dotal wealth and templar splendour of India, they 
shrink into insignificance. The principal use which 
the Indians seem to have made of the immense 
quantities of bullion, from age to age, imported into 
their empire, was to melt it down into statues of 
their deities ; if, indeed, by that title we may deno- 
minate the personified attitudes of the Almighty, 
and the elements of nature. Their pagodas were 
crowned with these golden and silver statues ; they 
thought any inferior metal must degrade the divinity. 
Every house too, was crowded with statues of their 
ancestors ; those ancestors that were exalted to the 



IN ALL AGES. 81 

stars for their piety, or valour. The very altars of 
the temples were of massy gold ; the incense flamed 
in censers of gold, and golden chalices bore their 
sacred oil, honey, and wine. The temple of Auruna, 
the day-star, had its lofty walls of prophyry internally 
covered with broad plates of gold, sculptured in rays, 
that, diverging every way, dazzled the beholder; 
while the radiant image of the deity burned in gems 
of infinite variety and unequalled beauty, on the 
spangled floor. The floor of the great temple of 
Naugracut, even so late as in the time of Mandesloe, 
was covered with plates of gold; and thus the 
Hindoo, in his devotion, ■ trampled upon the god of 
half mankind. 

In the processions also, made in honour of their 
idols, the utmost magnificence prevailed. They then 
brought forth all the wealth of the temple ; and every 
order of people strove to outvie each other in display- 
ing their riches, and adding to the pomp. The 
elephants marched first, richly decorated with gold 
and silver ornaments, studded with precious stones ; 
chariots overlaid with those metals, and loaded with 
them in ingots, advanced next; then followed the 
sacred steers, coupled together with yokes of gold, 
and a train of the noblest and most beautiful beasts of 
the forest, by nature fierce and sanguinary, but 
rendered mild and tractable by the skill of man: an 
immense multitude of priests carrying vessels, plates, 
dishes, and other utensils, all of gold, adorned with 
diamonds, rubies, and sapphires, for the sumptuous 
feast of which the gods were to partake, brought up 
the rear. During all this time, the air was rent with 
the sound of various instruments, martial and 
festive; and the dancing girls displayed in their 
sumptuous apparel, the wealth of whole provinces, 
exhausted to decorate beauty devoted to religion. 

G 



82 PRIESTCRAFT 

The Arabians hurst upon India, like a torrent; — 
their merciless grasp seized the whole prey! The 
western provinces first felt their fury. The Rajah of 
Lahore, when taken, had about his neck sixteen 
strings of jewels; each of which was valued at a 
hundred and eighty thousand rupees : and the whole 
at three hundred and twenty thousand pounds sterling. 
A sum, however, comparatively trifling, when com- 
pared with that of which the Sultan of Gazna after- 
wards became master in his eruption into that province ; 
and which Mirkhond states at seven millions of coin 
in gold, seven hundred maunds of gold in ingots, 
together with an inestimable quantity of pearls and 
precious stones. The maund is a Persian weight, 
never estimated at less than forty pounds. 

Let us attend this valiant marauder on another or 
two of his plundering expeditions into Hindostan. 
At the holy fane of Kreeshna, at Mathura, he found 
five great idols of pure gold, with eyes of rubies, of 
immense value. He found also three hundred idols 
of silver, which being melted down, loaded as many 
camels with bullion ; the usual load of a camel being 
from seven hundred to one thousand two hundred 
pounds weight. At the great temple of Sumnaut, he 
found many thousands of gold and silver idols of 
smaller magnitude ; a chain of gold, which was sus- 
pended from the roof, and weighed forty maunds; 
besides an inestimable horde of jewels of the first 
water. This prince, a day or two before his death, 
ordered his whole treasury to be placed before him ; 
and having for some time, from his throne, feasted 
his eyes on the innumerable sacks of gold, and 
caskets of precious stones, burst into tears — perhaps 
from the recollection of the bloodshed and atrocities 
by which they had been accumulated- — but more 
probably from the feeling of the vanity of all human 



IN ALL AGES. 83 

cupidity and power, — a dismal conviction that they 
could not save him, but that they must pass to other 
hands, and he to the doom of eternity. 

Immense quantities of the beautiful coins of Greece 
and Rome are supposed to have passed to India in 
the great trade of the ancients with it, for spices, silks, 
gems, and other precious articles, and to have been 
melted down in the crucible, without the least regard 
to the grandeur of their design, the majesty of the 
characters impressed, or the beauty of their execution, 
and went to swell the magnificence of the pagodas. 
We are well assured, that all the great pagodas of 
India had complete sets, amounting to an immense 
number, of the avaters and deities, which were deemed 
degraded if they were of baser metal than silver 
and gold; except in those instances where their 
religion required their idol to be of stone, as Jagger- 
nath; which had, however, the richest jewels of 
Golconda for eyes ; and Vishnu, in the great basin of 
Catmandu, in Nepaul. Such was the wealth ga- 
thered by the Tartars in this wonderful country, that 
Mahmoud of Gazna made feasts that lasted a month; 
and the officers of his army rode on saddles of gold, 
glittering with precious stones; and his descendant, 
Timur, made a feast on a delightful plain, called 
Canaugha, or the treasury of roses, at which was 
exhibited such a display of gold and jewels, that in 
comparison, the riches of Xerxes and Darius were 
trifling. The treasures which Timur took in Delhi, 
were most enormous ; — precious stones, pearls, rubies, 
and diamonds, thousands of which were torn from the 
ears and necks of the native women ; and gold and 
gems from their arms, ancles, and dress : gold and 
silver vessels, money, and bullion, were carried away 
in such profusion by the army, that the common 
soldiers absolutely refused to encumber themselves 



84 PRIESTCRAFT 

with more ; and an abundant harvest of plunder was 
left to future invaders. 

Mahmoud of Gazna hearing astonishing accounts 
of the riches of the great pagoda of Sumnaut, whose 
roof was covered with plates of gold and encircled 
with rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones, 
besieged the place, and took it. On entering the 
temple, he was struck with astonishment at the 
inestimable riches it contained. In the fury of his 
Mahommedan zeal against idols, he smote off the 
nose of the great image. A crowd of Brahmins, 
frantic at his treatment of their god, offered the most 
extravagant sums for his desistance ; but the soldiers 
of Mahmoud only proceeded with greater ardour to 
demolish it, when behold! on breaking its body, it 
was found to be hollow, and to contain an infinite 
variety of diamonds, rubies, and pearls of a water so 
pure, and a magnitude so uncommon, that the be- 
holders were overwhelmed with astonishment. But 
the riches accumulated by the priests of this affluent 
region were so immense, that they exceed the power 
of the imagination to grasp them; and I shall ]eave 
this subject with what Mr. Orme, in his History of 
Hindostan, tells us: — that the Brahmins slumbered 
in the most luxurious repose in these splendid 
pagodas ; and that the numbers accommodated in the 
body of the great ones, was astonishing. He acquaints 
us that pilgrims came from all parts of the Peninsula to 
worship at that of Seringham, but none without an 
offering of money ; that a large part of the revenue 
of the island is allotted for the maintenance of the 
Brahmins who inhabit it ; and that these, with their 
families, formerly composed a multitude, not less in 
number than forty thousand souls, supported with- 
out labour, by the liberality of superstition. 

So much for the ease and affluence of the Brah- 



IN ALL AGES. 85 

minical life ; now for a glance at that system which 
they had rendered so prolific of good things; — a 
system, the most awful that ever proceeded from the 
genius of priestcraft, fertile in cunning and profitable 
schemes. I have already shewn that in all nations 
the priests placed themselves at the head, and even 
controlled the king, as they often chose him. But in 
India, the Brahmins went, as I have remarked, still 
further. Here, in order to rivet for ever their chains 
on the people, they did not merely represent them- 
selves as a noble and inviolable race, but they 
divided the whole community into four castes. They 
wrote a book, and entitled it, " The Institutes of 
Menu," the son of Brahma. This book contained 
the whole code of their religious laws, which, as pro- 
ceeding from the divinity, were to last for all time, — 
be for ever and indissolubly binding on every Hindoo ; 
and not to be violated in the smallest degree, except 
on pain of forfeiting all civil privileges and enjoyments, 
of life itself, and of incurring the torments of hell. 
These castes were to preserve for ever their respective 
stations. Those born in one, were not only not to 
pass into another, but every man was bound to follow 
the profession of his father. Whatever might be the 
difference of genius, it must be crushed ; whatever 
desire to amend the condition of life, it must be 
extinguished; all variety of mind, all variations of 
physical constitution, all unfitness for one trade, 
station, or pursuit, went for nothing : — to this most 
infernal of priestly impositions, man, with all his 
hopes and desires, his bodily weaknesses, his mental 
aspirations, or repugnances, must succumb, and be 
lulled, or rather, cramped into an everlasting stupor, 
that the privileged Brahmin might tax him and 
terrify him, and live upon his labours, in the bound- 
less enjoyment of his own pride, and insolence, and 



86 PRIESTCRAFT 

lust. " By this arrangement," says Mr. Maurice, 
" it should be remembered, the happiness and se- 
curity of a vast empire was preserved through a long 
series of ages under their early sovereigns ; by curb- 
ing the fiery spirits of ambitious individuals, intestine 
feuds were, in a great measure, prevented ; the wants 
of an immense population were amply provided for 
by the industry of the labouring classes ; and the 
several branches of trade and manufacture were 
carried to the utmost degree of attainable perfection." 
A singular kind of happiness, and one which none 
but a priest could have a conception of. To plunge 
a great nation into the everlasting sleep and slug- 
gishness of ecclesiastical despotism, is to secure its 
happiness ! — the happiness of beasts maintained for 
the value of their labour, and fattened for the 
butcher ; — a happiness, which in the very sentence 
preceding, the writer terms " a barbarous attempt to 
chain down the powers of the human soul, to check the 
ardour of emulation, and damp the fire of genius." 

To establish this system the Brahmins resorted to 
the daring fraud of representing Menu — supposed to 
be Noah — as not "making all men of the same 
blood," but as producing four different tribes of men. 
The first, the Brahmins, from his mouth ; the 
second, the Kettri, or Rajahs, from his arm ; the 
third, the Bice, or merchants, from his thigh; and 
the fourth, the Sooder, or labouring tribe, from his 
foot ! Thus this doctrine, once received as true, an 
everlasting and impassable bar was placed between 
each tribe — divine authority. That it should not be 
endangered, the land of India was declared holy ; and 
the Hindoos were forbidden, by all the terrors of tem- 
poral and eternal penalties, to go out of it. The 
Brahmins having thus, in the early ages of supersti- 
tious ignorance, taken this strong ground, proceeded 



IN ALL AGES. 87 

to fortify it still further. The Rajahs, or provincial 
rulers were all chosen from their own, or the war- 
trihe ; and the Marajah, or supreme King, was 
always chosen hy them, often from themselves, and 
was entirely in their hands. By them he was 
educated, and moulded to their wishes ; they were 
appointed, by these divine institutes, his guardians, 
and perpetual, inalienable counsellors. 

Having thus firmly seized and secured the whole 
political power, they had only to rule and enrich 
themselves out of a nation of slaves, at their plea- 
sure ; paying them with promises of future hap- 
piness, or terrifying them by threats of future 
vengeance, into perfect passiveness ; and so com- 
pletely had this succeeded that, for thousands of 
years, their system has continued ; and it is the 
opinion of Sir William Jones, that so ingeniously is 
it woven into the souls of the Hindoos, that they 
will be the very last people converted to Christianity. 
For what, indeed, can be done with a nation who, 
from time immemorial, have been accustomed to 
regard their priests as beings of a higher nature, — 
their laws as emanations from Heaven, — and them- 
selves as the creatures of an unescapable destiny : 
who, on the one hand, are stunned with fear of future 
torments, and, on the other, are exposed to the 
dagger of the first man they meet, authorized by 
those pretendedly divine institutes to cut down every 
apostate that he encounters ? From such a con- 
summate labyrinth of priestly art nothing short of 
a miracle seems capable of rescuing them. 

The Brahmins, like the popish priests, for the arts of 
priests are the same everywhere, reserve to themselves 
the inviolable right of reading the Vedas, or holy 
books, and thus impose on the people what doctrines 
they please, So scrupulously do they guard against 



88 PRIESTCRAFT 

the exposure of their real contents, that it is only in 
comparatively modern times that they have become 
known. A singular story is told of the Emperor 
Akbar, who, desiring to learn the Hindoo tenets, 
applied to the Brahmins, and was refused. Here- 
upon he had the brother of his faithful minister, 
Abul Fazil, a youth, brought up with a Brahmin, 
under a feigned character : but, after a residence of 
ten years, and at the moment of being about to 
return to court, owing to his attachment to the 
Brahmin's daughter, he confessed the fraud, and 
would have been instantly stabbed by his preceptor, 
had he not entreated him for mercy on his knees, 
and bound himself by the most solemn oaths, not to 
translate the Vedas, nor reveal the mysteries of the 
Brahmin creed. These oaths he faithfully kept 
during the life of the old Brahmin ; but afterwards 
he conceived himself absolved from them, and to him 
we owe the publication of the real contents of those 
sacred volumes. 

But let us look at the system a little more at 
large. " Though," says Maurice, "the functions of 
government by the laws of Menu devolved on the 
Kettri, or Rajah tribe ; yet it is certain that in every 
age of the Indian empire, aspiring Brahmins have 
usurped and swayed the imperial sceptre. But, in 
fact, there was no necessity for the Brahmin to 
grasp at empire, — he wielded both the empire and 
the monarch. By an overstrained conception of the 
priestly character, artfully encouraged, for political 
purposes, by the priest himself, and certainly not 
justified by any precept given by Noah to his pos- 
terity, the Brahmin stood in the place of deity to the 
infatuated sons of Indian superstition; the will of 
heaven was thought to issue from his lips ; and his 
decision was reverenced as the fiat of destiny. Thus 



IN ALL AGES. 89 

boasting the positive interposition of the Deity in the 
fabrication of its singular institutions ; guarded from 
infraction by the terror of exciting the divine wrath ; 
and directed principally by the sacred tribe, the 
Indian government may be considered as a theocracy 
— a theocracy the more terrible, because the name of 
God was perverted to sanction and support the most 
dreadful species of despotism ; — a despotism which, 
not content with subjugating the body, tyrannized 
over the prostrate faculties of the enslaved mind. 

" An assembly of Brahmins sitting in judgment on 
a vicious, a tyrannical king, may condemn him to 
death ; and the sentence is recorded to have been 
executed ; but no crime affects the life of a Brahmin. 
He may suffer temporary degradation from his caste, 
but his blood must never stain the sword of justice ; 
he is a portion of the Deity. He is inviolable ! he is 
invulnerable ! he is immortal ! 

" In eastern climes, where despotism has ever 
reigned in its meridian terror, in order to impress 
the deeper awe and respect upon the crowd that daily 
thronged around the tribunal, the hall of justice was 
anciently surrounded with the ministers of vengeance, 
who generally inflicted in presence of the monarch 
the sentence to which the culprit was doomed. The 
envenomed serpent which was to sting him to death ; 
the enraged elephant that was to trample him beneath 
its feet ; the dreadful instruments that were to rend 
open his bowels, to tear his lacerated eye from the 
socket, to impale alive, or saw the shuddering wretch 
asunder, were constantly at hand. The audience 
chamber, with the same view, was decorated with 
the utmost cost and magnificence, and the East was 
rifled of its jewels to adorn it. Whatever little 
credit may in general be due to Philostratus, his de- 
scription of the palace of Musicanus too nearly resem- 



90 PRIESTCRAFT 

bles the accounts of our own countrymen, of the 
present magnificence of some of the rajahs, to be 
doubted, especially in those times when the hoarded 
wealth of India had not been pillaged. The arti- 
ficial vines of gold, adorned with buds of various 
colours in jewellery, and thick set with precious 
stones, emeralds, and rubies, hanging in clusters to 
resemble grapes in their different stages to maturity : 
the silver censers of perfume constantly borne before 
the ruler as a god : the robe of gold and purple with 
which he was invested ; and the litter of gold fringed 
with pearls, in which he was carried in a march, or to 
the chase, — these were the appropriate ornaments and 
distinctions of an Indian monarch. 

" In short, whatever could warmly interest the 
feelings, and strongly agitate the passions of men ; 
whatever influences hope ; excites terror ; all the 
engines of a most despotic superstition and a most 
refined policy, were set at work for the purpose of 
chaining down to the prescribed duties of his caste 
the mind of the bigoted Hindoo. Hence his un- 
altered, unalterable attachment to the national code, 
and the Brahminical creed. As it has been in India 
from the beginning, so will it continue to the end of 
time. For the daring culprit who violates either, 
heaven has no forgiveness, and earth no place of 
shelter or repose ! 

" An adultress is condemned to be devoured alive 
by dogs in the public market-place. The adulterer 
is doomed to be bound to an iron bed, heated red- 
hot, and burned to death. But what is not a little 
remarkable, for the same crime a Brahmin is only to 
be punished with ignominious tonsure. 

" For insulting a Brahmin, an iron style, ten fin- 
gers long, shall be thrust, red-hot, down the culprit's 
mouth. For offering only to instruct him in his 



IN ALL AGES. 91 

profession, boiling oil shall be dropped in his mouth 
and ears. For stealing kine, belonging to priests, 
the offender shall instantly lose half one foot. An 
assaulter of a Brahmin, with intent to kill, shall 
remain in hell for a hundred years ; for actually 
striking him, with like intent, a thousand years. But 
though such frequent exceptions occur in favour of 
Brahmins, none are made in favour of kings ! The 
Brahmin, — eldest-born of the gods, — who loads their 
altars with incense, who feeds them with clarified 
honey, and whose, in fact, is the wealth of the whole 
world, ever keeps his elevated station. To maintain 
him in holy and voluptuous indolence, the Kettri, 
or Rajah, exposes his life in front of battle ; the 
merchant covers the ocean with his ships ; the toiling 
husbandman incessantly tills the burning soil of India. 
We cannot doubt, after this, which of the Indian 
castes compiled this volume from the remembered 
Institutes of Menu. 

" The everlasting servitude of the Soodra tribe is 
riveted upon that unfortunate caste by the laws of 
destiny ; since the Soodra was bom a slave, and even 
when emancipated by his indulgent master, a slave 
he must continue : /or, of a state which is natural to him 9 
by whom can he be divested ? The Soodra must be 
contented to serve ; this is his unalterable doom. To 
serve in the family of a Brahmin is the highest glory, 
and leads him to beatitude." 

There is, however, a fifth tribe, — that of the out- 
casts from all the rest, — the Chandelahs ; those who 
have lost caste, and the children of mixed marriages, 
that abhorrence of the Hindoo code, for, if once per- 
mitted, it would overturn the whole artful system. It 
is ordained that the Chandelah exist remote from 
their fellow-creatures, amid the dirt and filth of the 
suburbs. Their sole wealth must consist in dogs and 



92 PRIESTCRAFT 

asses ; their clothes must be the polluted mantles of 
the dead ; their dishes for food, broken pots ; their 
ornaments, rusty iron ; their food must be given them 
in potsherds, at a distance, that the giver may not be 
defiled by the shade of their outcast bodies. Their 
business is to carry out the corpses of those who die 
without kindred ; they are the public executioners ; 
and the whole that they can be heirs to, are the clothes 
and miserable property of the wretched malefactors. 
Many other particulars of this outcast tribe are added 
by authors on India, and they form in themselves no 
weak proof of the unrelenting spirit of the Hindoo 
code, that could thus doom a vast class of people, — a 
fifth of the nation, — to unpitied and unmerited 
wretchedness. An Indian, in his bigoted attach- 
ment to the Metempsychosis, would fly to save the 
life of a noxious reptile ; but, were a Chandelah fall- 
ing down a precipice, he would not extend a hand 
to save him from destruction. In such abomination 
are the Chandelahs held on the Malabar side of India, 
that if one chance to touch one of a superior tribe, he 
draws his sabre and cuts him down on the spot. 
Death itself, that last refuge of the unfortunate, offers 
no comfort to him, affords no view of felicity or 
reward. The gates of Jaggernath itself are shut 
against him ; and he is driven, with equal disgrace, 
from the society of men and the temples of the gods. 

Such is the picture of priestcraft in India ; such the 
terrible spectacle of its effects, as they have existed 
there from nearly the days of the Flood. Towards 
this horrible and disgusting goal, it has laboured to 
lead men in all countries and all ages ; but here 
alone, in the whole pagan world, it has succeeded to 
the extent of its diabolical desires. We might add 
numberless other features : the propitiatory sacri- 
fice of cows, and trees of gold, prescribed by the 



IN ALL AGES. 93 

avaricious Brahmins ; the immunities and privileges 
with which they have surrounded themselves ; the 
bloody rites they have laid on others, especially 
among the Mahrattas, where, even at the present day, 
human sacrifices are supposed to abound ; the tortures 
they have induced the infatuated Yogees to inflict on 
themselves — some going naked all their lives, suffer- 
ing their hair and beard to grow till they cover their 
whole bodies, — standing motionless, in the sun, in 
the most painful attitudes, for years, till their arms 
grow fast above their heads, and their nails pierce 
through their clenched hands, — scorching themselves 
over fires, — enclosing themselves in cages, — and 
enacting other incredible horrors on themselves, for 
the hope, inspired by the Brahmins, of attaining 
everlasting felicity. But the subject is too revolting ; 
I turn from it in indignation, and here close my 
review of priestcraft in the pagan world. 



94 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE HEBREWS. 



We have now gone to and fro in the earth, and 
have walked up and down in it ; not, like a certain 
celebrated character, seeking whom we might devour, 
but inquiring who have been devoured of priests ; 
and everywhere we have made but one discovery ; 
everywhere, in lands, however distant, and times, 
however remote, a suffering people, and a proud and 
imperious priesthood have been found. Sinbad the 
sailor, in his multifarious and adventurous wander- 
ings, once chanced to land in a desert island, in 
which a strange creature, the Old Man of the Sea, 
leapt upon his shoulders, and there, spite of all his 
efforts to dislodge him, night and day, for a long 
time, maintained his station. By day, he com- 
pelled poor Sinbad, by a vigorous application of his 
heels to his ribs, to go where he pleased, — beneath 
the trees, whence he plucked fruit, or to the stream, 
where he drank. By night, he still clung, even in 
his sleep, with such sensitiveness to his neck, that it 
was impossible to unseat him. At length a success- 
ful stratagem presented itself to Sinbad. He found 
a gourd, and squeezed into it the juice of the grape, 
and set it in a certain place till it had fermented, and 
became strong wine. This he put to the mouth of 
the Old Man of the Sea, who drank it greedily, 
became drunk, and fell asleep so soundly, that Sinbad 



IN ALL AGES. 95 

unfolded his clinging legs from his breast, hurled him 
from his shoulders, and, as he lay, crushed his head 
with a stone. The adventure of Sinbad was awkward 
enough, but that of poor human nature has been 
infinitely worse. The Old Man of the Church, 
from age to age, from land to land, has ridden on the 
shoulders of humanity, and set at defiance all endea- 
vours and all schemes to dislodge him. Unlike the 
Old Man of the Sea, whose best beverage was a brook, 
he is too well inured to strong drinks to be readily 
overcome by them. He is one of those drinkers 
called deep-stomached, and strong-headed ; who sit 
out all guests, dare and bear all spirituous potations, 
and laugh, in invulnerable comfort, over the intoxica- 
tion of the prostrated multitude. And what wonder? 
His seat has ever been at the boards of princes. The 
most sparkling cup has not passed him by untasted ; 
the most fiery fluid has not daunted him. He has 
received the vintages reserved solely for kings and 
their favourites ; and though there was blood in it, he 
has not blenched. The tears of misery dropped into 
it, could not render it too bitter ; the bloody sweat- 
drops of despair too poisonous : though the sound of 
battle was in his ears, he ceased not to grasp the 
flagon, — it was music, — though martyrs burned at 
their stakes before him, and the very glow of their 
fires came strongly upon him, he interrupted not his 
carouse, but only cooled more gratefully his wine. 
He has quaffed the juice of all vines ; presided at the 
festivities of all nations ; poured libations to all gods : 
in the wild orgies of the ancient German and British 
forests he has revelled ; in the midnight feast of skulls 
he has pledged the savage and the cannibal ; the war- 
feast of the wilderness, or the sacred banquet of the 
refined Greek, alike found him a guest ; he has taken 
the cup of pollution from the hand of the Babylonian 



96 PRIESTCRAFT 

harlot; and pledged, in the robes of the Gallic 
Primate, renunciation of the Christian religion with 
the Atheist. Lover of all royal fetes ; delighter in 
the crimson-cushioned ease of all festivals in high 
places ; soul of all jollity where the plunderers and 
the deluders of man met to rejoice over their achiev- 
ments ; inspirer of all choice schemes for the destruc- 
tion of liberty and genuine knowledge when the 
vintage of triumphant fraud ferments in his brain, till 
the wine of God's wrath, in the shape of man's indig- 
nation, confound him, — what shall move him from 
his living throne ? From the days of the Flood tc* 
those of William the Fourth of England he has ridden 
on, exultingly, the everlasting incubus of the groaning 
world. 

We have perambulated the prime nations of pagan- 
ism. It would have been easy to have extended our 
researches further, to have swelled our details to 
volumes ; but the object was only to give a sample 
from the immense mass of ecclesiastical enormities. 
We now come to the Holy Land ; and to the only 
priesthood ever expressly ordained of heaven. It 
might have been expected that this would prove a 
splendid exception to the general character of the 
order ; but alas ! — as the Jewish dispensation was 
formed under the pressing necessity of guarding 
against the idolatry of surrounding nations, and as 
merely preparatory to a more spiritual one, so it 
would seem as if one design of the Almighty had 
been to shew how radically mischievous and prone to 
evil an ecclesiastical order is, under any circum- 
stances. The Jewish priests had this advantage 
over all others whatever, that they were one tribe 
of a great family, to whom, in sharing out the land 
given to them of God, the altar was made their 
sole inheritance, — the whole country being divided 



IN ALL AGES. 97 

amongst the other eleven tribes. But, notwithstand- 
ing this fair title, so strongly did the universal spirit 
of priestcraft work in them, that their history may 
be CQmprised in a few sentences, and is one of the 
most striking in the world. It began in Aaron with 
idolatry, accompanied by most pitiful evasions ; it 
shewed itself in its prime, in the sons of Eli, in 
shameless peculation and lewdness; and it ended 
in the crucifixion of Christ ! Such a beginning — 
a middle — and an end — the world besides cannot 
shew. 

When we hear Aaron telling the people, in the face 
of the most astounding miracles, — when the sound 
of God's trumpets, which had shaken them to the 
earth, in terror, had yet scarcely ceased to ring in 
their ears, — when God himself, in a fiery majesty, 
that made the mountain before them smoke and 
tremble to its base, was at hand delivering to 
Moses his eternal law — hear him telling them to 
bring their golden ornaments, and he would make 
a god to go before them ; and, in the next moment, 
telling Moses that the people constrained him, 
and he threw the gold into the fire, and " out 
came this calf," as if by accident, — we are filled 
with contempt for sacerdotal sycophancy and time- 
serving. 

When we read that " the sons of Eli were the 
sons of Belial, — they knew not the Lord: — and the 
priests' custom was, that when any man offered 
sacrifice, the priests' servant came while the flesh 
was in seething, with a flesh-hook of three teeth 
in his hand; and he strook it into the pan, or kettle, 
or cauldron, or pot; — all that the flesh-hook brought 
up, the priest took for himself. So they did in 
Shiloh, to all the Israelites that came thither. Also, 

ii 



98 PRIESTCRAFT 

before they burnt the fat the priests' servant came, 
and said to the man that sacrificed, ' give flesh to 
roast for the priest, for he will not have sodden 
flesh of thee, but raw.' And if any man said unto 
him, ' let them not fail to burn the fat presently, 
and then take as much as thy soul desireth;' and 
then he would answer him, — ' Nay, but thou shalt 
give it me now; and if not, I will take it by 
force.' Therefore the sin of the young men was 
very great before the Lord; for men abhorred the 
offering of the Lord. Now Eli was very old, 
and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel ; 
and how they lay with the women that assembled 
at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." 
When we read this, we are on fire with indignation. 
But when we hear the chief priests crying out 
against Christ — the hope, nay, the great object 
of the formation of their nation, — the most meek, 
and pure, and beneficent being that ever existed — 
" away with this fellow ! he is not fit to live ! 
Away with him! crucify him!" we are thunder- 
struck with astonishment! — we are silenced and 
satisfied for ever, of the rooted and incurable ma- 
lignancy of priestcraft. If God himself descended 
from heaven, and charged a priestly hierarchy with 
corruption, they would tell him to his face, that 
he lied. They would assail him as a slanderer 
and misrepresenter of the good, and raise, if pos- 
sible, his own world in arms against him ! If the 
fate of all other nations spoke to us in vain— that 
of the Jews should be an eternal warning. The 
very priests which God ordained, first corrupted, 
and then destroyed the kingdom. They began 
with idolatry, and ended with killing the Son 
of God himself. Their victims, the Jews, still 



IN ALL AGES. 99 

walk before our eyes, a perpetual and fearful testi- 
mony against them. It was the priests who 
mainly contributed to annihilate them for ever as 
a people, and to disperse them through all re- 
gions, the objects of the contempt, the loathing, 
and the pitiless persecution of all ages, and of 
every race. 



h2 



100 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER X. 

POPERY. 



O that the free would stamp the impious name 

Of Pope into the dust ! or write it there, 
So that this blot upon the page of fame 

Were as a serpent's path, which the light air 
Erases, and the flat sands close behind ! 
Ye the oracle have heard ; 
Lift the victory-flashing-sword, 
And cut the snaky knots of this foul Gordian word, 
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind 

Into a mass, irrefragably firm, 
The axes and the rods which awe mankind. 
The sound has poison in it — 't is the sperm 
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred ; 
Disdain not then, at thine appointed term, 
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. 

Shelley. 



Christ appeared; — the career of Paganism was 
checked; — the fate of Judaism was sealed. A cha- 
racter and a religion were placed before the eyes of 
men hitherto inconceivable in the beauty and phi- 
lanthropy of their nature. Unlike all other founders 
of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no 
desire of dominance ; and his system, unlike all other 
systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly bene- 
ficent, inexpressibly pure, and, most marvellous of 
all, went to break all bonds of body and soul; and 
to cast down every temporal and every spiritual 
tyranny. It was a system calculated for the whole 



IN ALL AGES. 101 

wide universe ; — adapted to embrace men of all 
climes, all ages, all ranks of life, or intellect; for 
the rich and for the poor ; for the savage and the 
civilized; for the fool and the philosopher; for man, 
woman, and child ; — which, recognizing the grand 
doctrine, that " God made of one blood all the nations 
of the earth," represented the Almighty as the father, 
and all men as brethren born to one universal love, — 
to the same inalienable rights, — to the same eternal 
hope. He himself was the living personification of 
his principles. Demolishing the most inveterate 
prejudices of men, by appearing a poor man amongst 
the poor; by tearing from aristocratic pride and 
priestly insolence their masks of most orthodox 
assurance ; by proclaiming, that the truth which he 
taught should make all men free ; by declaring that 
the Gentiles lorded it over, and oppressed one another, 
but that it should not be so with his followers ; by 
pulling down with indignation spiritual pride in high 
places, and calling the poor and afflicted, his brethren, 
and the objects of his tenderest regard, — he laid the 
foundations of civil and religious freedom, of mental 
power growing out of unrestrained mental energies, 
and of love and knowledge co-equal in extension 
with the world. This perfect freedom of universal 
man he guarded by leaving no decrees ; but merely 
great, and everlasting principles, intelligible to the 
mind and conscience of the whole human race ; and 
on which, men in all countries, might found institu- 
tions most consonant to their wants. By declaring 
that "wherever two or three were met together in 
his name, he would be in the midst of them," he cut 
off, for ever, every claim, the most specious, of 
priestly dominance ; and by expressing his un- 
qualified and indignant abhorrence of every desire of 
his disciples " to call down fire from heaven upon 



102 PRIESTCRAFT 

his enemies," or to forbid those to preach and work 
miracles in his name, who did not immediately fol- 
low him, and conform to their notions, he left to his 
church a light more resplendent than that of the sun, 
on the subject of non-interference with the sacred 
liberty and prerogatives of conscience. 

One would have thought that from this epoch, the 
arm of priestcraft would have been broken ; that it 
would never more have dared to raise its head ; — but 
it is a principle of shameless avidity and audacity ; 
and it is exactly from this time that we trace the 
most amazing career of its delusions and atrocities, 
down to the very day of our own existence. 

Who is not familiar with the horrors and arrogant 
assumptions of the papal church ? Scarcely had the 
persecutions of the pagan emperors ceased, when the 
Christian church became inundated with corruptions 
and superstitions of every kind. Constantine em- 
braced Christianity; and almost the whole world 
embraced it nominally with him. From a conversion 
of such a kind, the work of regal example and 
popular interested hopes, what effects were to be 
expected? The martial tyranny of ancient Rome, 
which had subdued the world, was coming to an 
end. The wealth of which a thousand states had 
been stripped, had turned to poison in her bosom, 
and brought upon the stern mistress of bloodshed 
and tears that retribution, from which national rapine 
and injustice never eventually escape. But as if the 
ghost of departed despotism hovered over the Seven 
Hills, and sought only a fresh body to arise in a 
worse shape, a new tyranny commenced in the form 
of priestcraft, ten times more terrible and hateful 
than the old, — because it was one which sought to 
subjugate not merely the persons of men, but to 
extinguish knowledge; to crush into everlasting 



IN ALL AGES. 103 

childishness the human mind ; and to rule it, in its 
fatuity, with mysteries and terrors. The times 
favoured the attempt. With the civil power of the 
Roman empire, science and literature were disappear- 
ing. A licentious army controlled the destiny of a 
debauched and effeminated people ; and the Gothic 
and Hunnish nations, rushing in immense torrents 
over the superannuated states of Europe, scattered, 
for a time, desolation, poverty, and ignorance. At 
this crisis, while it had to deal with hordes of rough 
warriors, who, strong in body and boisterous in 
manner, had yet minds not destitute of great energies, 
and many traditional maxims of moral and judicial 
excellence, but clothed in all the simple credulity of 
children, — up rose the spirit of priestcraft in Rome, 
and assumed all its ancient and inflated claims. As 
if the devil, stricken with malice at the promulgation 
of Christianity, which threatened to annihilate his 
power, had watched the opportunity to inflict on it 
the most fatal wound, and had found no instrument 
so favourable to his purpose as a priest, — such a 
glorious and signal triumph never yet was his from 
the creation of the world. Had he devised a system 
for himself, he could not have pitched upon one like 
popery; — a system which, pretending to be that of 
Christ, suppressed the Bible, — extinguished know- 
ledge, — locked up the human mind, — amused it with 
the most ludicrous baubles, — and granted official 
licenses to commit all species of crimes and impurity. 
Satan himself became enthroned on the Seven Hills 
in the habit of a priest, and grinned his broadest 
delight amidst the public and universal reign of 
ignorance, hypocrisy, venality, and lust. 

As if the popes had studied the pagan hierarchies, 
they brought into concentrated exercise all their 
various engines of power, deception, and corruption. 



104 PRIESTCRAFT 

They could not, indeed, assert, as the pagan priest- 
hood had done, that they were of a higher origin than 
the rest of mankind ; and therefore entitled to sit as 
kings, to choose all kings, and rule over all kings ; 
for it was necessary to preserve some public alle- 
giance to the doctrines of Christianity, — but they took 
ground quite as effective. They declared them- 
selves the authorized vicegerents of heaven ; making 
Christ's words to Peter their charta — " On this rock 
I will build my church," — hence asserting themselves 
to be the only true church, though they never could 
shew that St. Peter ever was at Rome at all. On 
this ground, however — enough for the simple war- 
riors of the time — they proceeded to rule over nations 
and kings. On this ground they proclained the in- 
fallibility of the pope and his conclave of cardinals, 
and thus excluded all dissent. Their first act, having 
once taken this station, was that which had been the 
practice of priests in all countries, — to shut up the 
true knowledge amongst themselves. As the priests 
of Egypt and Greece inclosed it in mysteries, they 
wrapt the simple truths of the gospel in mysteries too ; 
as the Brahmins forbid any except their own order 
to read the sacred Vedas, — they shut up the Bible,- — 
the very book given to enlighten the world ; — the 
very book which declared of its own contents, that 
" they were so clear that he who ran might read 
them ;" that they taught a way of life so perspicuous 
that " the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not 
err therein." This was the most daring and auda- 
cious act the world had then seen ; but this act once 
successful, the whole earth was in their power. The 
people were ignorant ; they taught them what they 
pleased. They delivered all sorts of ludicrous and 
pernicious dogmas as scripture ; and who could con- 
tradict them? So great became the ignorance of 



IN ALL AGES. 105 

even their own order, under this system, so com- 
pletely became the Bible a strange book, that when, 
in after ages, men began to inquire, and to expose their 
delusions, a monk warned his audience to beware of 
these heretics who had invented a new language, 
called Greek, and had written in it a book called the 
New Testament, full of the most damnable doctrines. 
By every act of insinuation, intimidation, forgery, 
and fraud, they not only raised themselves to the 
rank of temporal princes, but lorded it over the 
greatest kings with insolent impunity. The Bann, 
which we have seen employed by the priests of 
Odin in the north, they adopted, and made its terrors 
felt throughout the whole Christian world. Was a 
king refractory — did he refuse the pontifical demand 
of money — had he an opinion of his own — a repug- 
nance to comply with papal influence in his affairs ? — 
the thunders of the Vatican were launched against 
him ; his kingdom was laid under the bann ; all 
people were forbidden, on pain of eternal damnation, 
to trade with his subjects ; all churches were shut ; 
the nation was of a sudden deprived of all exterior ex- 
ercise of its religion ; the altars were despoiled of their 
ornaments ; the crosses, the reliques, the images, the 
statues of the saints were laid on the ground ; and, 
as if the air itself were profaned, and might pollute 
them by its contact, the priests carefully covered 
them up, even from their own approach and venera- 
tion. The use of bells entirely ceased in all churches ; 
the bells themselves were removed from the steeples, 
and laid on the ground with the other sacred utensils. 
Mass was celebrated with shut doors, and none but 
the priests were admitted to the holy institution. 
The clergy refused to marry, baptise, or bury ; the 
dead were obliged to be cast into ditches, or lay pu- 
trefying on the ground ; till the superstitious people, 



106 PRIESTCRAFT 

looking on their children who died without baptism 
as gone to perdition, and those dead without burial 
amid the ceremonies of the church and in consecrated 
ground as seized on by the devil, rose in rebellious 
fury and obliged the prince to submit and humble 
himself before the proud priest of Rome. 

Realms quake by turns : proud arbitress of grace, 

The church, by mandate shadowing forth the power 

She arrogates o'er heaven's eternal door, 

Closes the gates of every sacred place. 

Straight from the sun and tainted air's embrace 

All sacred things are covered ; cheerful morn 

Grows sad as night — no seemly garb is worn, 

Nor is a face allowed to meet a face 

With natural smile of greeting. Bells are dumb ; 

Ditches are graves— funereal rites denied ; 

And in the church-yard he must take his bride 

Who dares be wedded ! Fancies thickly come 

Into the pensive heart ill fortified, 

And comfortless despairs the sou] benumb. 

Wordsworth. 

But not merely kings and kingdoms were thus 
circumstanced, every individual, every parish was 
liable to be thus excommunicated by the neighbour- 
ing priest. The man who offended one of these 
powerful churchmen, however respected and influen- 
tial in his own neighbourhood over night, might the 
next morning behold the hearse drawn up to his 
hall door, — a significant emblem that he was dead to 
all civil and religious rights, and that if he valued his 
life, now at the mercy of any vile assassin, he must 
fly, and leave his family and his property to the same 
tender regards which had thus outlawed himself. 

The invention of monkery was a capital piece of 
priestly ingenuity. By this means the whole world 
became inundated with monks and friars, 

Black, white, and grey, with all their trumpery. 



IN ALL AGES. 107 

A standing army of vigilant forces was set up in 
every kingdom : into every town and village they 
entered ; in every house they became familiar spies, 
ready to communicate the earliest symptoms of in- 
subordination to the papal tyranny, ready at a signal 
to carry terror into every region, and rivet faster the 
chains of Rome. Like the frogs of Egypt, they 
came up and covered the earth ; they crept into every 
dwelling; into the very beds and kneading tubs, 
sparing not those of the king himself — till the land 
stank with them. 

That they might have something to occupy the 
imagination of the people equivalent to the numerous 
idols, gorgeous temples, imposing ceremonies, and 
licentious festivals of the heathen ; not only had they 
paintings of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but 
images of Christ, of his mother, and of a thousand 
saints, who were exalted to be objects of a veneration 
little to be distinguished from worship in the minds of 
the deluded people. To these they prayed ; to these 
they made offerings. Splendid churches were built, 
and adorned with every fascination of statuary and 
painting ; and carnivals, religious festivals, and pro- 
cessions ordained without number, in which all the 
lewdness and license of the pagan worship were 
revived. Instead of the charms which the pagans 
gave as a protection against evil, they gave relics — 
bits of wood, hair, old teeth, and a thousand other 
pieces of rubbish, which were pretended to be parts, 
or to have been the property of, the saints, and were 
endued with miraculous powers. Thus were men 
made fast prisoners by ignorance, by the excitement 
of their imaginations, and by objects on which to 
indulge their credulity. But other engines equally 
potent were set to work. Every principle of terror, 
love, or shame in the human mind was appealed to. 
Oral confession was invented. Every person was to 



108 PRIESTCRAFT 

confess his sins to the priest. Thus the priest was 
put into possession of everything which could en- 
slave a man to him. Who was so pure in life and 
thought that, after having unbosomed himself to his 
confessor — made him the depository of his most 
secret thoughts, his weakest or worst actions, dare 
any more to oppose or offend him ? But the chains 
of shame and fear were not all ; those of hope were 
added. The priest had not only power to hear sins, 
but to pardon them. He could shut up in hell, or 
let out ; he was not content with enslaving his fol- 
lower in this world — he carried on his influence to 
the next, and even invented a world, from the tor- 
tures of which no man could escape without his 
permission. 

How all this could be built on the foundation of 
Christianity might be wondered at; but it should 
never be forgotten that the Bible was locked up, 
and everything was directed to the acquisition of 
power and gain. Everything was a source of gain. 
Besides the direct tribute to the popedom, every shrine 
had its offerings ; every confession, every prayer had 
its price. Escape from purgatory and indulgence in 
sin were regulated by a certain scale of payment. The 
rich, the foolish, and the penitent were wheedled out 
of their property to maintain the endless train of pope, 
cardinals, priests, monks, nuns, confessors, and their 
subordinates. By them abbeys, cathedrals, and 
churches were endowed with ample lands; and every 
one who incurred the censure of the church, added 
also by fines to its funds. For a thousand years this 
system was triumphant throughout Europe ; 

Thou heaven of earth ! what spells could pall thee then, 

In ominous eclipse ! A thousand years 
Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den, 

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears. 

Over a great part of it, it reigns still. 



IN ALL AGES. 109 

Millions of monks and secular priests, all for- 
bidden to marry ; all pampered in luxurious ease 
and abundance to voluptuousness, were let loose on 
the female world as counsellors and confessors, with 
secresy in one hand, and amplest power of absolution 
from sin in the other ; and the effect on domestic 
purity may be readily imagined. So, smoothly ran 
the course of popery for many a century : but when, 
spite of all its efforts to the contrary, the human 
mind again began to stir ; when knowledge again 
revived ; and the secrets of the church were curiously 
pried into ; then this terrible hierarchy, calling itself 
Christian, let loose its vengeance. Fire and fagot, 
chains and dungeons, exterminating wars, and in- 
quisitions, those hells on earth, into which any man 
might, at a moment's notice, be dragged from his 
family, his fireside, or his bed, at the instigation of 
malice, envy, cupidity, or holy suspicion, to tortures 
and death. These were the tender mercies of the 
papal priestcraft in the hour of its fear. 

This is a brief sketch of what the popish church 
was : we will now go on to give evidence of its 
spirit and proceedings from the best authenticated 
histories. 

1 . Of the means employed to obtain power. 

2. Of the uses of that power. 

3. Of the arrogance of the popish priesthood in 
power. 

4. Of their atrocities. 

The evidence I shall select must necessarily be a 
very small portion from the immense mass of the 
deeds of this church ; for its history is such a con- 
tinued tissue of ambition, cupidity, and vice in its 
most hateful shapes, — dissensions, frauds, and blood- 
shed, that nothing but the desire to draw from it a 
great moral and political lesson, could induce me to 
wade through it: 



110 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER XI. 

POPERY CONTINUED. 



» They willeth to be king's peres, 
And higher than the emperour ; 
And some that weren but pore freres 
Now woollen waxe a warriour. — Chaucer. 

But, Lorde, we lewed men k no wen no God but thee, and 
we, with thyne help and thy grace, forsaken Nabugodonosor and 
hys lawes. For he, in his prowd estate, wole have all men onder 
hym, and he nele be onder no man. He ondoeth thy lawes that 
thou ordenest to be kept, and maketh hys awne lawes as hym 
lyketh, and so he maketh hym kynge aboven all other kynges 
of the erth ; and maketh men to worschupen hym as a God, 
and thye gret sacryfice he hath ydone away. 

The Ploweman's Praier. 



The earliest means which the bishops of Rome 
employed to acquire power was, to assert their 
supremacy over all other bishops of the Christian 
church. This was not granted at once, but led to 
many quarrels with their cotemporaries. The bishop 
of Constantinople, in particular, contended with them 
for the superiority ; the emperor Constantine having 
shifted there the seat of civil government. These 
odious squabbles I must necessarily pass over, and 
confine myself entirely to the Romish church, as 
being more intimately connected with our object. I 
may state, once for all, that the patriarchs of Con- 
stantinople maintained the contest with Rome through 



IN ALL AGES. Ill 

every age to the very time of the Reformation ; and 
many disgraceful expositions of priestly wrath were 
made on both sides. Of the Greek church, it will he 
sufficient to say, that its prelates partook largely in 
the arts and vices of priests in general, and plunged 
that church into an abundance of ceremonious pueril- 
ities, in which it remains to this day. 

The attempts of the Romish pontiffs to grasp at 
power were not crowned with instant success, either 
over their fellow priests or cotemporary princes. It 
was a work of time, of continual stratagem, and the 
boldest acts of assumption. The full claims of papal 
dominion over the Christian world in Europe were 
not admitted, indeed, till the 11th century. 

In the 4th century, Mosheim says, in the episcopal 
order the bishop of Rome was the first in rank ; and 
was distinguished by a sort of pre-eminence over all 
other bishops. Prejudices, arising from a variety of 
causes, contributed to establish this superiority ; but 
it was chiefly owing to certain circumstances of 
grandeur and opulence, by which mortals, for the 
most part, form their ideas of pre-eminence and 
dignity, and which they generally confound with the 
reasons of a just and legal authority. The bishop 
of Rome surpassed all his brethren in the magnifi- 
cence and splendour of the church over which he 
presided ; in the riches of his revenues and posses- 
sions ; in the number and variety of his ministers ; 
in his credit with the people ; and in his sumptuous 
and splendid manner of living. These dazzling 
marks of human power ; these ambiguous proofs of 
true greatness and felicity, had such an influence on 
the minds of the multitude, that the see of Rome 
became, in this century, a most seducing object of 
sacerdotal ambition. Hence it happened, that when 
a new pontiff was to be elected by the suffrages of the 



112 PRIESTCRAFT 

presbyters and the people, the city of Rome was 
generally agitated with dissensions, tumults, and 
cabals, whose consequences were often deplorable and 
fatal. One of these, in 366, gave rise to a civil war, 
which was carried on within the city of Rome with 
the utmost barbarity and fury, and produced the most 
cruel massacres and depopulations. 

The picture of the church which Milton makes 
Michael foreshew to Adam was speedily realized. 

The Spirit 
Poured first on his apostles, whom he sends 
To evangelize the nations, then on all 
Baptized, shall them with wond'rous gifts endue 
To speak all tongues, and do all miracles, 
As did their Lord before them. Thus they win 
Great numbers of each nation, to receive 
With joy the tidings brought from Heaven : at length, 
Their ministry performed, and race well run, 
Their doctrine, and their story written left, 
They die ; but in their room, as they forewarn, 
Wolves shall succeed for teachers, grievous wolves, 
Who all the sacred mysteries of Heaven 
To their own vile advantages shall turn 
Of lucre and ambition : and the truth 
With superstitions and traditions taint, 
Left only in those written records pure, 
Though not but by the Spirit understood. 
Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names, 
Places and titles, and with these to join 
Secular power ; though feigning still to act 
By spiritual ; to themselves appropriating 
The Spirit of God, promised alike and given 
To all believers ; and, from that pretence 
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force 
On ev'ry conscience ; laws which none shall find 
Left them enrolled, or what the Spirit within 
Shall on the heart engrave. What will they then 
But force the Spirit of Grace itself, and bind 
His consort Liberty 1 What but unbuild 
His living temple, built by Faith to stand, 
Their own faith, not another's ? For, on earth, 
Who against faith and conscience can be heard 



IN ALL AGES. 113 

Infallible 1 Yet many will presume : 

Whence heavy persecution shall arise 

On all, who in the worship persevere 

Of spirit and truth ; the rest, far greater part, 

Will deem, in outward rites and specious forms, 

Religion satisfied : truth shall retire 

Bestuck with slanderous darts, and works of faith 

Rarely be found : so shall the world go on, 

To good malignant, to bad men benign : 

Under her own weight groaning: till the day 

Appear of respiration to the just, 

And vengeance to the wicked. 

In this century many of those steps were laid by 
which the bishops of Rome afterwards mounted to 
the summit of ecclesiastical power and despotism. 
These steps were laid, partly by the imprudence of 
the emperors, partly by the dexterity of the Roman 
prelates. In the fifth century the declining power of 
the emperors left the pontiff at liberty to exercise 
authority almost without control ; and the irruptions 
of the barbarians contributed to strengthen this 
authority ; for, perceiving the subserviency of the 
multitude to the bishop, they resolved to secure his 
interest and influence by loading him with benefits 
and honours. 

This was the second mode by which they acquired 
power, — flattering the surrounding kings ; serving 
them occasionally, without regard to honour or prin- 
ciple, or, as they grew stronger, subduing them by 
menaces to their will. In the seventh century the 
Roman pontiffs used all sorts of methods to maintain 
and enlarge the authority and pre-eminence they had 
acquired by a grant from the most odious tyrant that 
ever disgraced the annals of history. Boniface III. 
engaged Phocas, that abominable despot, who waded 
to the imperial throne through the blood of the 
Emperor Mauritius, to take from the Patriarch of 
Constantinople the title of ^Ecumenical, or Universal 



114 PRIESTCRAFT. 

Bishop, and confer it upon him. In the next century 
a still more glaring stretch of assumed priestly power 
was exhibited. We observe, says Mosheim, in the 
French annals, the following remarkable and shocking 
instance of the enormous power that was, at this time, 
invested in the Roman pontiff. Pepin was mayor 
of the palace to Childeric III. ; and, in exercise of 
that high office, was possessed, in reality, of the 
royal power ; but, not content with this, he formed 
the design of dethroning his sovereign. He therefore 
sent ambassadors to Rome to inquire, whether the 
divine law did not permit a valiant and warlike people to 
dethrone a pusillanimous and indolent monarchy who was 
incapable of performing any of the functions of royalty , 
and to substitute in his place one more ivorthy to rule ? 
Zachary had need of the aid of Pepin ; and his 
answer was all that could be wished. When this 
decision of the pope was published in France, Pepin 
stripped poor Childeric of his royalty ; and stepped 
immediately into his throne. This decision was 
solemnly confirmed by his successor, Stephen II., 
who went to France ; and being under the necessity 
of soliciting Pepin's aid against the Lombards, 
dissolved the act of allegiance and fidelity the usurper 
had sworn to Childeric ; and, to render his title as 
firm as possible, anointed and crowned him, his wife, 
and two sons. 

This compliance of the Roman pontiffs' proved an 
abundant source of opulence and credit to them. 
Pepin marched into Italy, subdued all the pope's 
enemies, and put him in possession of the Grecian 
provinces in Italy. The Exarch of Ravenna, when 
Pepin retired, threw off the yoke, and besieged Rome; 
but Pepin returned, and compelled him again to 
deliver up the exarchate of Ravenna and Pentapolis 
to the pontiff; and thus raised the Bishop of Rome 



IN ALL AGES. 115 

to the rank of a temporal prince. After Pepin's 
death a new attack was made upon the papal terri- 
tory, by Dideric, king of the Lombards. The then 
pope, Adrian I., fled to Charlemagne, the son of 
Pepin ; who, having need of the pope's sanction to 
seize on the Eastern Roman Empire, hastened to 
Rome ; repelled the pope's foes, and in consideration 
of his sanction of his ambitious views, added fresh 
territories to the papal see. Thus, by the most 
shameless and unprincipled trafficking between the 
pretended Vicar of Christ, and these bold bad kings, 
did the popes acquire royalty and dominion, and 
gave to treason and regal robbery the assumed sanc- 
tion of heaven ! Once placed by kings on temporal 
thrones, these audacious priests soon shewed their 
royal cotemporaries what companions they had ad- 
mitted amongst them. Not contented with what 
royal robbery had given them, they speedily assailed 
their princely neighbours ; sought to hurl them from 
their throne, and stirred up some of the most bloody 
wars on record. 

The notorious Hildebrand, a Tuscan monk, of 
mean origin, having arrived at the pontificate, styled 
himself Gregory VII., and displayed to the world the 
full measure of the priestly spirit. He was a man, 
says Mosheim, of uncommon genius, whose ambition 
in forming the most arduous projects, was equalled 
by his dexterity in bringing them into execution. 
Sagacious, crafty, and intrepid, he suffered nothing 
to escape his penetration, defeat his stratagems, or 
daunt his courage. Haughty and arrogant beyond 
all measure ; obstinate, impetuous, and intractable ; 
he looked up to the summit of universal empire with 
a wistful eye ; and laboured up the steep ascent with 
uninterrupted ardour, and invincible perseverance. 
Void of all principle, destitute of everv virtuous 

i 2 



116 PRIESTCRAFT 

feeling ; he suffered little restraint in his audacious 
pursuits from the dictates of religion, or the remon- 
strances of conscience. Not content to enlarge the 
jurisdiction and augment the opulence of the see of 
Rome, he strove to render the universal church sub- 
ject to its despotism ; to dissolve the jurisdiction of 
kings and princes over the various orders of the 
clergy ; and exclude them from the management of 
the revenues of the church. Nay, he would sub- 
mit to his power the kings, emperors, and princes 
themselves ; and render their dominions tributary to 
Rome. Such were the pious and apostolic exploits 
that employed Gregory VII. during his whole life ; 
and which rendered his pontificate a continual scene 
of tumult and bloodshed. His conduct to France 
was worthy of the country which had first given 
princely power to the Roman priests, and of himself. 
It was just that the realm which had put power into 
such hands for such purposes as it did, should be 
bitten by a fiendish ingratitude. Hildebrand de- 
clared France tributary to the see of Rome ; and 
ordered his legates to demand yearly, in the most 
solemn manner, the payment of that tribute. Nothing 
can be more insolent than the language in which the 
priest addressed himself to Philip of France, recom- 
mending an humble and obliging carriage, from this 
consideration, that both his kingdom and his soul were 
under the dominion of St. Peter, i. e., his vicar, the 
pope, who had power to bind and to loose him both on 
earth and in heaven. Nothing escaped his all-grasp- 
ing ambition. He drew up an oath for the emperor 
of the Romans, from whom he demanded a profession 
of subjection and obedience. He pretended Saxony 
was a feudal tenure, having been a pious offering of 
Charlemagne to the see of Rome. He claimed 
Spain : maintained it had been the property of the 



IN ALL AGES. 117 

apostolic see from the earliest times of the church ; 
and the Spanish princes paid him tribute. He made 
the like attempts on England : but found in William 
the Conqueror a different subject. William granted 
his Peter-pence, but refused to do homage for his 
crown. He wrote circular letters to the German 
princes, to Geysa, King of Hungary, and Sweno, 
King of Denmark, demanding submission. The son 
of Demetrius, Czar of the Russias, went to Rome, in 
consequence of his letters, to obtain the kingdom 
which would devolve to him on his father's death, as 
a gift from St. Peter, after professing subjection and 
allegiance to the prince of the Apostles, — a gift 
readily granted by the officious pope, who was ex- 
tremely liberal of what did not belong to him. De- 
metrius Suinimer, Duke of Croatia and Dalmatia, 
was raised to royalty by him in the year 1076 ; and 
solemnly proclaimed King at Salona, on condition 
that he should pay annually two hundred pieces of 
gold to St. Peter, at the Easter festival. Boleslaus 
II., King of Poland, having killed Stanislaus, Bishop 
of Cracow, Gregory not only excommunicated him, 
but hurled him from his throne ; dissolved the oath 
of allegiance which his subjects had taken ; and 
forbid, by an express, imperious edict, the nobles 
and clergy of Poland from electing a new king 
without his leave. 

In Italy his success was transcendant. Matilda, 
the daughter of Boniface Duke of Tuscany, the most 
powerful and opulent princess of that country, found 
that neither ambition nor years had extinguished the 
tender passion in the heart of Gregory, — and as a 
testimony of the familiarity which existed between 
them, settled all her possessions in Italy and else- 
where upon the church of Rome ; an act, however, 
strongly resisted by her successor, and the cause of 
many struggles and much bloodshed. 



118 PRIESTCRAFT 

To complete his despotic power over every Chris- 
tian prince, this odious priest claimed the sole right 
of installing bishops in their office. It had been the 
custom of every prince to appoint the bishops of his 
own land. At the death of any one of these, the ring 
and crosier, the insignia of his office, were sent to the 
monarch, and were by him delivered to the one he 
appointed. This right Gregory claimed as the sole 
prerogative of the pope ; thus designing to make the 
whole church dependent on him, and entirely sub- 
servient to all the papal views — powerful instruments 
in the pontifical hands against both prince and people, 
the world over. The resistance this claim met with, 
led to terrible wars ; and we shall have occasion to 
mention that with the Emperor of Germany, and his 
humiliation before the haughty priest, under the head 
of priestly arrogance. 

Thus did this race of most shameless and audacious 
men, while they called themselves the pastors of the 
flock of the meek and tender Christ, daringly and 
recklessly advance to a pitch of the most amazing, 
enduring, and universal despotism over the loftiest 
and most powerful monarchs. But to display effect- 
ively the full character of the Roman pontiffs, we 
must write volumes on their deeds in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, which were filled with their 
arrogant demands from, and assumptions over, the 
sovereign powers of Europe ; for, at once, Conrad 
Duke of Suabia, and Frederick of Austria, were 
actually beheaded at Naples by order of Clement IV. ; 
and another emperor, Henry IV., is supposed to have 
been poisoned by a wafer, in taking the sacrament 
from a Dominican monk. Their excommunications, — 
their wars, — their vindictive quarrels with kings, and 
with each other, — these things swell the numerous 
volumes of ecclesiastical history. Nothing, indeed, 



IN ALL AGES. 119 

is so revolting in all the annals of the world as the 
malignant bitterness of these vicars of Christ against 
each other upon different occasions. Their unbridled 
ambition led more than once to the election of two 
popes at the same time, and to the consequent tear- 
ing asunder of all Europe with their petty factions. 

The example of the pontiffs was not lost on the 
bishops, abbots, and inferior clergy. These, even in 
the time of Charlemagne, had actually obtained for 
their tenants and their possessions an immunity from 
the jurisdiction of the counts and other magistrates ; 
as also from taxes and imposts of all kinds. But 
in this century they carried their pretensions still 
further, — aimed at the civil government of the cities 
and territories in which they exercised a spiritual 
dominion ; and even aspired to the honours and 
authority of dukes, marquises, and counts of the 
empire. The nobles were for ever resisting, in their 
respective domains, the assumptions of the clergy in 
matters of jurisdiction and other affairs. These, 
therefore, seized the opportunity which was offered 
them by the superstition of the times, to obtain from 
the kings these, the ancient rights of the nobles ; and, 
as the influence of the bishops over the people was 
greater than that of the nobility, the kings, to secure 
:he services of so powerful a priesthood, generally 
granted their requests. Thus they became bishops and 
abbots clothed with titles and dignities so foreign to 
their spiritual office, — reverend dukes, marquises, 
counts, and viscounts ! 

It was not however by these means only that they 
sought dominion over the world. They had a thou- 
sand arts to rivet their power into the souls of the 
people. Councils were one of them. As if the 
sacerdotal name and inculcations were not influential 
eiough, they sought, by collecting together all the 



120 PRIESTCRAFT 

dignities of the church into one place, to invest them 
with a more awful character ; and to render the enact- 
ments of these priestly congresses everlasting and 
indissoluble laws. These enactments were such as — 
the worship of images, decreed in the council of Nice 
787 ; the holding of a festival to the virgin mother, 
instituted by the council of Mentz in the 9th century ; 
taking the cup of the sacrament from the laity ; and 
a declaration of the lawfulness of breaking the most 
solemn engagements made to heretics, by the council 
of Constance in the fifteenth century, with a thousand 
other despotic or absurd decrees against all sects, 
and all freedom of opinion ; and for the institution! 
of exclusive rites and festivals. 



■ 



IN ALL AGES. 121 

CHAPTER XII. 

POPERY CONTINUED. 



(Chastity speaks J. 

I blame the Emperour Constantine, 
That I am put to sic mine, 

And baniest from the kirk : 
For since he maid the Paip an king, 
In Rome, I could get na lodging : 

But headlong in the dark. 
But ladie Sensualitie, 
Since then, has guidit this cuntrie, 

And monie of the rest : 
And now scho reulis all this land 
And has decreed, at her command, 

That I should be supprest. 
Sir David Lyndsay's Satyre of the Three Estaites. 



The establishment of monkery was another means 
of building up a perfect despotism by the papists. 
These orders orginated in the third century, and, 
multiplying through successive ages, became, not 
only various in name, but countless in number ; 
spreading in swarms throughout every part of Chris- 
tendom ; propagating superstition, lewdness, and 
ignorance ; acting as spies and supporters of the 
papal dominion ; fixing themselves in every fertile 
and pleasant spot ; awing, or wheedling the rich and 
foolish out of their lands and possessions ; and, at 
length, bursting out into the most bitter quarrels 
amongst themselves, became like so many rabid dogs 
TOfore the public eye ; and hastened, in no small 
degree, the downfall of the church which had set 



122 PRIESTCRAFT 

them up for its own support. They, as well as the 
secular clergy, were forbidden to marry ; and hence 
flowed a torrent of corruption throughout the world. 
In the third century they formed, says Mosheim, 
connexions with those women who had made vows 
of chastity ; and it was an ordinary thing for an eccle- 
siastic to admit one of these fair saints to his bed, 
but still under the most solemn declarations that 
nothing passed contrary to the rules of chastity and 
virtue ! These holy concubines were called Mulieres 
Subintroductce. 

Yet more, — round many a Convent's blazing fire 

Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun ; 

There Venus sits disguised like a Nun, — 

While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar, 

Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher 

Sparkling, until it cannot choose but run 

Over the bowl, whose silver lip hath won 

An instant kiss of masterful desire — 

To stay the precious waste : through every brain 

The domination of the sprightly juice 

Spreads high conceits, to madding Fancy dear, 

Till the arched roof, with resolute abuse 

Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain, 

Whose votive burden is — " Our kingdom's here !" 

Wordsworth. 

These fellows too, especially the Mendicants, wan- 
dering over Europe, were the most active venders of 
relics, and propagators of every superstitious notion 
and rite. Their licentiousness, so early as the fifth 
century, was become proverbial ; and they are said to 
have excited thus early, in various places, the most 
dreadful tumults and seditions. In the next century 
they multiplied so prodigiously in the east, that whole 
armies might have been raised of them without any 
sensible diminution of their numbers. In the western 
provinces also they were held in the highest venera- 
tion, and both monks and nuns swarmed. In Great 



IN ALL AGES. 123 

Britain, an abbot, Cougal, persuaded an innumerable 
number of persons to abandon the affairs, duties, and 
obligations of life, and to shut themselves up in idle- 
ness, or to wander about in holy mischief. In the 
seventh century, the contagion spread still more 
enormously. Heads of families, striving to surpass 
each other's zeal for the advancement of monkery, 
shut up their children in convents, and devoted them 
to a solitary life as the highest felicity. Abandoned 
profligates, terrified by their guilty consciences, were 
comforted with the delusive hopes of pardon, by 
leaving their fortune to monastic societies. Multi- 
tudes deprived their children of their rich lands and 
patrimonies, to confer them on the monks, whose 
prayers were to render the Deity propitious. In the 
following century the mania had reached such a 
height, that emperors and kings conferred whole pro- 
vinces, cities, and titles of honour on these creatures. 
In the succeeding ages, so much did their licentious- 
ness and ignorance increase, that in the tenth century 
few of the monks knew the rules of their own orders 
which they had sworn to obey, but lived in the most 
luxurious and prodigal magnificence with their concu- 
bines. The fourteenth century was distracted with 
the contentions of the various orders of the monks, 
who had grown so full of wealth, luxury, pride and 
all evil passions, that they not only turned their 
wrath against each other, but against the popes 
themselves. Their bitter and presumptuous bicker- 
ings filled this century with the most strange and 
hateful scenes. 

We must pass over an infinite quantity of the 
monkish history, and content ourselves with a few 
remarks of Mosheim, on their state in the sixteenth 
century, at the time when their crimes and excesses 
were bringing on them the Reformation. The pro- 



124 PRIESTCRAFT 

digious swarms of monks, says this historian, that 
overran Europe, were justly considered as burdens to 
society; and, nevertheless, such was the genius of 
the age, an age that was just emerging from the 
thickest gloom of ignorance, and was suspended, as it 
were, in a dubious situation between darkness and 
light, that these monastic drones would have remained 
undisturbed, had they taken the least pains to pre- 
serve any remains even of the external air of decency 
and religion, which distinguished them in former 
times. But the Benedictine, and other monkish 
fraternities, who were invested with the privilege of 
possessing certain lands and revenues, broke through 
all restraint, and made the worst possible use of their 
opulence ; and, forgetful of the gravity of their cha- 
racter, and of the laws of their order, rushed headlong 
into the shameless practice of vice, in all its various 
kinds and degrees. On the other hand, the Men- 
dicant orders, and especially the Dominicans and 
Franciscans, lost their credit in a different way : for 
their rustic impudence, their ridiculous superstitions, 
their ignorance, cruelty, and brutish manners, tended 
to alienate from them the minds of the people. They 
had the most barbarous aversion to the arts and 
sciences, and expressed a like abhorrence of certain 
learned men, who being eagerly desirous of enlighten- 
ing the age, attacked their barbarism in both their 
discourse and their writings ; — this was the case with 
Beuchlerius, Erasmus, and others. 

The Dominicans possessed the greatest power and 
credit of all monks; — they presided in church and 
state ; were confessors to the great, and judges of the 
horrible Inquisition — circumstances which put most 
of the European princes under their control ; but, not 
content with these means of influence, they resorted 
to the most infamous frauds, to enslave the ignorance 



IN ALL AGES. 125 

of the age. One of the most singular instances of 
this sort, is that recorded by Reuchat, in his Histoire 
de la Reformation en Suisse ; by Hottinger, and by 
Bishop Burnett, in his Travels on the Continent. So 
remarkable is it, that I must give it as compendi- 
ously as I can. 

" The stratagem was in consequence of a rivalry 
between the Dominicans and Franciscans, and more 
especially of their controversy concerning the im- 
maculate conception of the Virgin Mary. The latter 
maintained that she was born without the blemish of 
original sin : the former asserted the contrary. The 
doctrine of the Franciscans, in an age of superstition, 
could not but be popular ; and hence the Dominicans 
lost ground daily. To obviate this they resolved, at 
a Chapter held at Vimpsen in 1504, to have recourse 
to fictitious visions, in which the people at that time 
had an easy faith; and they determined to make 
Bern the scene of their operations. A lay-brother of 
the name of Jetzer, an extremely simple fellow, was 
fixed on as the instrument of these delusions. One 
of the four Dominicans who had undertaken the man- 
agement of this plot, conveyed himself secretly into 
Jetzer' s cell, and about midnight appeared to him in 
a horrid figure, surrounded with howling dogs, and 
seeming to blow fire from his nostrils by means of a 
box of combustibles which he held near his mouth. 
He approached Jetzer's bed, and told him he was the 
ghost of a Dominican who had been killed at Paris, 
as a judgment of heaven for laying aside his monastic 
habit ; that he was condemned to purgatory for this 
crime, and could only be rescued from his horrible 
torments by his means. This story, accompanied 
with horrid cries and bowlings, frightened poor Jetzer 
out of what little wits he had, and engaged him to do 
all in his power to rescue the Dominican from his 



126 PRIESTCRAFT 

torment. The impostor then told him that nothing 
but the discipline of the whip applied for eight days 
by the whole monastery, and Jetzer's lying prostrate 
on the chapel floor in the form of a cross during 
mass, could effect this. He added, these mortifica- 
tions would secure Jetzer the peculiar favour of the 
Blessed Virgin ; and told him he would appear to 
him again, with two other spirits. 

Morning was no sooner come, than Jetzer related 
these particulars to the whole convent; who enjoined 
him to undergo all that he was commanded, and 
promised to bear their part. The deluded simpleton 
obeyed, and was admired as a saint by the multitude 
who crowded about the convent ; while the four friars 
who managed the imposture, magnified, in the most 
pompous manner, the miracle of this apparition in 
their sermons and conversations. Night after night 
the apparition was renewed, with the addition of two 
other impostors, dressed like devils; and Jetzer's 
faith was augmented, by hearing from the spectre all 
the secret of his own life and thoughts, which the 
impostors had got from his confessor. In this and 
subsequent scenes, whose enormities we must pass 
over, the impostor talked much to Jetzer of the 
Dominican order ; which, he said, was peculiarly dear 
to the Blessed Virgin ; that the Blessed Virgin knew 
herself to be born in original sin; that the doctors who 
taught the contrary, were in purgatory; that she 
abhorred the Franciscans for making her equal to her 
Son ; and that the town of Bern would be destroyed 
for harbouring such plagues within it. 

In one of these apparitions, Jetzer, silly as he was, 
discovered the similarity of the spectre's voice to that 
of the prior — who it actually was — yet he did not 
suspect the fraud. The prior appeared in various 
disguises ; sometimes as St. Barbaro, sometimes as 



IN ALL AGES. 127 

St. Bernard, and, at length, as the Virgin herself, 
clothed in the habit which adorned her statue at fes- 
tivals. The little images that on these days are set 
on the altar, were used for angels, which being tied to 
a cord which passed through a pully over Jetzer's 
head, rose up and down, and danced about the pre- 
tended virgin, to increase the delusion. The virgin 
addressed a long discourse to Jetzer; gave him a 
marvellous wafer, — a host which turned, in a moment, 
from white to red ; and, after various visits, in which 
the greatest enormities were acted, the virgin-prior 
told Jetzer she would give him the most undoubted 
proof of her Son's love, by imprinting on him the five 
wounds that pierced Jesus on the cross, as she had 
done before to St. Lucia and St. Catherine. Ac- 
cordingly she took his hand, and thrust a large nail 
through it, which threw the poor dupe into the 
greatest torment. The next night, this masculine 
virgin brought, as she pretended, some of the linen 
in which Christ had been buried, to soften the wound ; 
and gave Jetzer a soporific draught, composed of the 
blood of an unbaptized child, some incense, con- 
secrated salt, quicksilver, the hairs of a child's 
eye-brows, with some poisonous and stupifying 
ingredients, mingled by the prior with magic cere- 
monies, and a solemn dedication of himself to the 
devil, in hope of his aid. This draught threw the 
poor wretch into a lethargy, during which the other 
four wounds were imprinted on his body. When he 
awoke and discovered them, he fell into unspeakable 
joy, and believed himself a representation of Christ 
in the various parts of his passion. He was, in this 
state, exposed to the admiring multitude on the 
principal altar of the convent, to the great mortifica- 
tion of the Franciscans. The Dominicans gave him 
some other draughts, and threw him into convulsions, 



128 PRIESTCRAFT 

which were followed by a voice conveyed through a 
pipe into the mouths of two images, one of Mary, the 
other of the child Jesus ; the former of which had 
tears painted upon its cheeks in a lively manner. 
The little Jesus asked his mother why she wept ; she 
answered, for the impious manner in which the Fran- 
ciscans attributed to her the honour that was due to 
him. 

The apparitions, false prodigies, and abominable 
stratagems were repeated every night : and were, at 
length, so grossly overacted, that even the simple 
Jetzer saw through them, and almost killed the priest. 
Lest this discovery should spoil all, they thought it 
best to own the whole to Jetzer, and prevail on him 
to join in the imposture ; engaging him, by the most 
seducing promises of opulence and glory, to carry on 
the delusion. Jetzer appeared to be persuaded, but 
lest he should not be faithful and secret, they at- 
tempted to poison him ; and it was alone owing to 
the vigour of his constitution that they did not suc- 
ceed. Once they gave him a rich spiced loaf, which, 
growing green in a day or two, he threw a piece to a 
wolf's whelps, kept in the monastery, and it killed 
them immediately. Again they poisoned the host, 
or consecrated wafer ; but he vomited it up. In 
short, the most detestable means to destroy him and 
his evidence were employed ; but he succeeded in 
getting out of the convent, and throwing himself into 
the hands of the magistrates. The whole thus came 
to be sifted out ; commissioners were sent from Rome 
to examine the affair ; and the four friars were 
solemnly degraded, and burnt alive on the last day 
of May, 1509. Jetzer died soon after. Had he been 
destroyed before this exposure, this execrable plot 
would have been handed down to posterity as a 
stupendous miracle." 



IN ALL AGES. 129 

Rome could hasten to punish such vile frauds when 
they were made public, but she was not the less ready 
to practise them herself in the most daring maimer, 
as I shall proceed to shew : but before leaving this 
strange case of Jetzer it may be remarked, that auda- 
cious and even incredible as it may appear to many, it 
rests upon too good authority to be doubted. Hun- 
dreds, indeed, of similar instances might be brought, 
for the whole history of the Romish church is that of 
fraud and delusion : but we need not go out of our 
own country for similar transactions. Who does not 
call to mind the affair of the Maid of Kent, enacted in 
the reign of Henry the Eighth at the very moment 
he was aiming a death-blow at popery, and in the face 
of a people whose eyes were opening to the acts and 
impostures of the papal sorceress ? The case may be 
seen at large in Hume. The substance of it is this : 
some monks, and one Masters, the vicar of Alding- 
ton, in Kent, got hold of a girl of the name of Eliza- 
beth Barton, who was subject to • convulsive fits, and 
induced her to enter into a system of deception on the 
public mind. They gave out that she was inspired, 
and in these fits delivered the words of the Virgin 
Mary. Having once imposed, not merely on the 
common people, but engaged the Archbishop of 
Canterbury and other dignitaries of the church in the 
affair, they proceeded to promulgate heavenly mes- 
sages against the reforming principles, and even 
threatened destruction to the king if he proceeded in 
them. The friars, throughout the country, counte- 
nanced the delusion, and propagated it with all their 
zeal and might. But they had a man to deal with 
very inauspicious for their purpose. He arrested the 
holy maid and her accomplices, brought them before 
the Star Chamber, and soon terrified them into a full 
confession of their imposture. A most scandalous 

K 



130 PRIESTCRAFT 

scene was laid open. Her principal accomplices, 
Masters the vicar, and Dr. Bocking, a canon of Can- 
terbury, were found to have a private entrance to her 
chamber, and to have led a most licentious life with 
her. The girl and six of her coadjutors were executed; 
and the Bishop of Rochester and others were con- 
demned for misprision of treason, because they had 
not revealed her criminal speeches, and were thrown 
into prison. This was in England in the sixteenth 
century, and is a good specimen of the spirit of 
monkery : but another of a more menacing kind was 
soon given. Their " Diana of the Ephesians" was 
in danger ; the king threatened not only to destroy 
popery, but to root out the monasteries ; and it was 
not in the nature of priests and monks to resign their 
ill-gotten booty without a struggle. They set up 
the standard of rebellion. A monk, the Prior of 
Barlings in Lincolnshire, was at the head of it. He 
marched with 20,000 men at his heels, till he fell 
into the king's hands. But another army from the 
north was not so easily scattered. This, which con- 
sisted of 40,000 men, called its enterprise the Pil- 
grimage of Grace. Some priests marched before in 
the habits of their order, carrying crosses in their 
hands ; in their banners was woven a crucifix, 
with the representation of the chalice, and the Hve 
wounds of Christ. They wore on their sleeve an 
emblem of the five wounds, with the name of Jesus 
wrought in the middle : and all took an oath that 
they had no motive but love to God, care of the king's 
person and issue ; and a desire to purify the nobility, 
drive base-born persons from about the king, and 
restore the church, and suppress heresy. With those 
pretensions they marched from place to place ; took 
Hull, York, and other towns ; excited great dis- 
turbance and clamour, and were not dispersed but 



IN ALL AGES. 131 

with great difficulty. This was a trial of force where 
fraud could not succeed of itself, according to the 
established papal policy ; but fraud was alone one of 
its most successful means of acquiring power, and 
in order to contemplate this instrument more clearly 
we must go back again to an earlier age. 

To advance their power the popes did not shrink 
from the most audacious forgery. Such was that 
of the notorious decretals of Isidore ; documents 
purporting to be written by the early pontiffs, and 
containing grants of the Holy See from Constantine ; 
of the supremacy of the pope, and other privileges ; 
all proved by the clearest evidence to be the most 
barefaced inventions. 

Frauds were multiplied abundantly to besot and 
blind the popular spirit. Monks, bishops, warriors, 
and men of the worst characters, nay of neither cha- 
racter nor real existence, as St. George and his 
dragon, were canonized, made into saints, and their 
lives written in a manner most calculated to beguile 
the ignorance of the times. Shrines were set up, 
and churches dedicated to them, where people might 
pray for their aid. Dreams and miracles were pre- 
tended to throw light on the places of their burial ; 
solemn processions were set on foot to discover and 
take them up ; and the most miraculous powers attri- 
buted to them. Bones were buried, and afterwards 
pretended to be found, and declared by heaven to 
belong to saints and martyrs : and bits of bone, hairs, 
fragments of filthy rags, and other vile tilings ; chips 
of the true cross, etc., were sold at enormous prices, 
as capable of working cures and effecting blessings of 
all kinds. The milk of the Virgin, and the blood of 
St. Januarius, which liquified on the day of his festi- 
val, were particularly famous in Italy. In England, 
at the dissolution of the monasteries, many very 

K 2 



132 PRIESTCRAFT 

curious ones were found. The parings of St. Ed- 
mond's toes ; some of the coals that roasted St. Law- 
rence ; the girdle of the Virgin, shewn in eleven 
several places ; the belt of St. Thomas of Lancaster, 
an infallible cure for the headach ; part of St. Thomas 
of Canterbury's shirt ; but chief of all, the blood of 
Christ brought from Jerusalem, and shewn for many 
ages at Hales in Gloucestershire. This sacred blood 
was not visible to any one in mortal sin ; but in doing 
sufficient good work, i. e., paying money enough, it 
revealed itself. It was preserved in a phial, one side 
of which was transparent, the other opaque. Into 
this the monks every week put a fresh supply of the 
blood of a duck ; and, on any pilgrim arriving, the dark 
side was shewn him, which threw him into such con- 
sternation for his sinful state, that he generally pur- 
chased masses and made offerings, till his money or 
fortune began to fail ; when the charitable monks 
turned the clear side towards him ; he beheld the 
blood, and went away happy in his regenerate con- 
dition. 

Rumours were spread of prodigies to be seen in 
certain places ; robbers were converted into martyrs ; 
tombs falsely given out to be those of saints ; and 
many monks travelled from place to place, not only 
selling, with matchless impudence, their fictitious 
relics, but deluding the eyes of the people with ludi- 
crous combats with spirits and genii. Ambrose, in his 
disputes with the Arians, produced men possessed 
with devils, who, upon the approach of the relics of 
Gervasius and Protatius, were obliged to cry out that 
the doctrine of the Council of Nice on the Trinity was 
true, and that of the Arians false. One of the pre- 
cious maxims of the fourth century was, "that it was 
an act of virtue to deceive and lie when it could pro- 
mote the interest of the church." — a maxim never 



IN ALL AGES. 133 

afterwards forgotten. Pilgrimages to distant holy 
places were hit upon as a strong means to employ 
the minds and enslave the affections of numbers ; 
houses, as that of the Virgin at Loretto, were even 
said to descend from heaven to receive the sacred en- 
thusiasm of men ; and Crusades, those preposterous 
and tremendous wars, whose details are filled with the 
most exquisite miseries, and most abhorrent crimes 
and licentiousness, were promoted, as potent means of 
employing the power and exhausting the treasures 
of kings. In those crusades, millions of miserable 
wretches, men, women, and children — the low, the 
ignorant, the idle, the dissolute — after wandering from 
kingdom to kingdom, the wonder and horror of the 
inhabitants, were consumed ; and from those crusades 
in return, loads of relics were poured out of Syria 
over all Europe. 

All kinds of ceremonies and festivals were im- 
ported from paganism for the same end. Auricular 
Confession was invented, by which the clergy be- 
came the keepers of the consciences of the whole world; 
and the spiritual tyrants, not merely of the weak and 
the wicked, but of every one capable of a sense of 
shame or of fear. Indulgences were granted for the 
commission of crimes, and past sins pardoned for mo- 
ney and gifts of lands : — and Purgatory ! that most 
subtle and profitable invention of priestcraft, was 
contrived, to give the church power over both living 
and dead. Thus was the religion of Christ com- 
pletely disfigured by pagan ceremonies, and made to 
sanction all wickedness for the sake of gain. The 
very celebration of worship w r as ordered to be 
in Latin ; an unknown tongue to the great mass of 
those who heard it, so that they were reduced not 
only to feed on the chaff and garbage of priestly 
fables, but in the very temple of God himself to fill 



134 PRIESTCRAFT 

themselves with mere wind and empty sounds. The 
hread was taken from the children and given to the 
dogs. Mass was invented — that splendid piece of 
mummery, which, filling the eyes while it enlightened 
not the mind, was at once an instrument of keeping 
the people in ignorance ; of fixing them fast by the 
imagination to the hollow trunk of formality ; and of 
filling the pockets of the priests, by whom it was 
never performed without a fee ; — for the souls of the 
dead paid more or less according to the imagined 
need. For many a great sinner masses were esta- 
blished for ever ; and whole lordships were given to 
the church, to support chapels and chantries for the 
peace of souls that were already beyond rescue, or 
need of redemption. Every prayer and paternoster 
had its price. Thus was heaven, earth, and all 
therein turned into a source of beastly gain. The 
rage for dominion in the popes, says Mosheim, was 
accompanied by a most insatiable avarice. All the 
provinces of Europe were drained to enrich those 
spiritual tyrants, who were perpetually gaping after 
new accessions of wealth. 

Another mode of influence was, constituting churches 
asylums for robbers and murderers ; another, that 
dark one of excommunication; another, the borrowing 
of ordeals from the pagans ; another, the right of 
patronage ; and, lastly, the terrors of the inqui- 
sition. 

Such were the multiplied means employed for the 
monopoly of all the wealth, power, and honour of the 
universe by this infamous race of vampyres ; and we 
have but too many instances of their determination to 
quench and keep down knowledge in their treatment 
of Bacon, Petre d' Abano, Arnold of Villa Nuova, and 
Galileo ; to say nothing of the reformers, whom they 
regarded as their natural enemies, and destroyed 



IN ALL AGES. 135 

without mercy. Mankind owes to the Roman church 
an everlasting reward of indignation for its attempts 
to crush into imbecility the human mind, and to 
insult it in its weakness with the most pitiful baubles 
and puerilities. 

And for what end were all these outrages on huma- 
nity, — these mockeries of every thing great,— these 
blasphemies of every thing holy, perpetrated ? That 
they might wallow, undisturbed, in the deepest mire 
of vice and sensuality, and heap upon those they had 
deluded and stripped of property, of liberty and of 
mind, insult and derision. Let every man who hesi- 
tates to set his hand to the destruction of state reli- 
gions, look on this picture of all enormities that can 
disgrace our nature, and reflect that such is the 
inevitable tendency of all priestcraft. Is it said we 
see nothing so bad now ? And why ? Because man 
has got the upper hand of his tyrant, and keeps him 
in awe, — not because the nature of priestcraft is 
altered ; and yet, let us turn but our eyes to Catholic 
countries, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and the scene is 
lamentable ; and even in our own country, where 
free institutions check presumption, and the press 
terrifies many a monster from the light of day, — we 
behold things which make our hearts throb with indig- 
nation. 

I had intended to give some specimens of papal 
lust, gluttony, and other infamous habits, but I turn 
from them in disgust ; for those who seek them, 
ecclesiastical history is full. I shall only devote a 
few pages to Romish arrogance and atrocities, and 
then dismiss this Harlot of the Seven Hills. 



136 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER XIII. 



POPISH ARROGANCE AND ATROCITIES, 



Unless to Peter's Chair the viewless wind 
Must come and ask permission where to blow, 
What further empire would it have 1 — for now 
A ghostly Domination, unconfined 
As that by dreaming bards to love assigned, 
Sits there in sober truth — to raise the low, 
Perplex the wise, the strong to overthrow — 
Through earth and heaven to bind and to unbind ! 
Resist — the thunder quails thee! — crouch — rebuff 
Shall be thy recompense ! from land to land 
The ancient thrones of Christendom are stuff 
For occupation of a magic wand, 
And 't is the Pope that wields it ; — whether rough 
Or smooth his front, our world is in his hand ! 

Wordsworth. 



We have seen, in the progress of this volume, that 
arrogance and atrocity are prominent and imperish- 
able features in the priestly character ; and it might 
be imagined that instances had been given in various 
ages and nations which could not be surpassed : but 
if we consider the fierce and audacious exhibition of 
those qualities in the Romish priests ; the greatness 
and extent of the kingdoms over which they exercised 
them ; and the mild and unassuming nature of the 
religion they professed to be the teachers of, it must 
be confessed that the world has no similar examples 
to present. The papal church seemed actuated by a 



IN ALL AGES. 137 

perfect furor and madness of intolerance, haughty 
dictation, and insolent cruelty. In the 12th cen- 
tury the pope proclaimed himself Lord of the Uni- 
verse ; and that neither prince nor bishop possessed 
any power but what was derived from him ; in the 
14th he, on one occasion, at a great dinner, ordered 
Dandolo, the Venetian ambassador, to be chained 
under the table like a dog. In 1155 the pope 
insisted on the celebrated emperor, Frederick Bar- 
barossa, holding his stirrup, at the emperor's own 
coronation ; a proposal at first rejected with disdain, 
and which led to contests of a most momentous 
nature. Some writers affirm that his successor, hav- 
ing compelled the emperor to submit, trod upon his 
neck, and obliged him to kiss his foot while the 
proud prelate repeated, from Psalm xci. — " Thou 
shalt tread upon the lion and the adder ; the young 
lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under foot." 
Our great poet receives it as fact. 

Black Demons hovering o'er his mitred head, 

To Caesar's successor the pontiff spake ; 

" Ere I absolve thee, stoop ! that on thy neck 

Levelled with earth this foot of mine may tread." 

Then he who to the altar had been led, 

He, whose strong arm the Orient could not check, 

He who had held the Soldan at his beck, 

Stooped, of all glory disinherited, 

And even the common dignity of man ! 

Amazement strikes the crowd. 

Wordsworth. 

In the eighth century the humiliating ceremony 
of kissing the pope's toe was introduced. In 1077 
the famous pope, Gregory VII., compelled the em- 
peror, Henry IV., to do penance for his resistance to 
his monstrous claims. The unhappy monarch passed 
the Alps in a severe winter ; waited on the pontiff at 
Canusium, where, unmindful of his dignity, he stood 



138 PRIESTCRAFT 

three days at the entrance of the fortress (within 
which the detestable pope was feasting with his 
mistress, the Countess Matilda), with his head and 
feet bare, and no other raiment than a wretched 
piece of woollen cloth. On the fourth day he was 
admitted to the pontiff, who scarcely deigned to grant 
him the absolution he sought, and absolutely refused 
to restore him to his throne till after further delay 
and further indignities. The humiliation of holding 
the stirrup was also forced on the emperor Louis II. ; 
and every reader is familiar with the arrogant spectacle 
of pope Alexander riding into the French camp, with 
the French monarch on the one side, and the English 
on the other, walking at his stirrup. We have 
already seen the boundless assumption and insolence 
of the popes in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries ; how they thundered their anathemas against 
kings and emperors , dethroned and beheaded as they 
pleased ; made bloody wars on them to wrest from 
them their power, and even set up new kingdoms. 

Their clergy naturally caught the same spirit, and 
carried into every region and every house the same 
intolerable haughtiness. The papal legates came to 
the courts of the greatest princes, with an odious 
arrogance that fully represented that of their master. 
From the history of the European nations, we might 
select the most astonishing instances of legates, 
cardinals, and bishops, before whom both monarch 
and people trembled; but I shall only select one or 
two from our own annals. Who can ever forget the 
notorious Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury ? one of the most perfect personifications of 
priestly insolence and audacity. This wretch, who 
had been raised to his high dignity by his royal 
master, and loaded with every honour, having once 
gained all that his ambition could hope from the in- 



IN ALL AGES. 139 

dulgent monarch, became one of the most captious 
and troublesome villains that ever disturbed, with 
priestly pride, the peace of kingdoms. Henry, by an 
act of the Council of Clarendon, endeavoured to bring 
into some tolerable degree of restraint, the power and 
license of the clergy. Becket most arrogantly refused 
all obedience to the king's wishes; and backed by 
Alexander III., the same pope who had so humiliated 
Frederick Barbarossa, commenced a course of annoy- 
ance to the mild- spirited king, which, even at this 
distance of time, makes one's blood boil with in- 
dignation to read. The monarch, aroused by it, 
compelled Becket to retire to France. Hereupon the 
pope and the French king interposed ; and endeavoured 
so far to pacify the offended sovereign, as to allow 
Becket to return to England, and resume his office. 
But who that knows any thing of priests could hope 
that he would be touched with any sense of shame, or 
gratitude towards his forgiving prince ? He became 
only more inveterately rebellious, and carried his 
insolence so far, that four gentlemen who witnessed 
with indignation the vexations heaped on their so- 
vereign, hastened to Canterbury, and inflicted on the 
haughty and sanctimonious wretch, deserved and 
exemplary death. 

But if Becket was dead, the haughty pope was 
alive, and soon compelled poor Henry to the most 
humiliating degradations ; — to go, bare-headed and 
bare-footed, on pilgrimage to Canterbury, and do 
penance at the canonized shrine of the now sainted 
Becket ! 

A similar fate was that of poor king John, — the 
weak and wicked Lack-land. He ventured to oppose 
the pope's power, who had proceeded to set aside the 
election of John de Grey to the see of Canterbury, 
and to appoint, spite of the king and the nation, 



140 PRIESTCRAFT 

Stephen Langton, primate of England. John as- 
sumed a high tone ; and threatened to extinguish the 
papal power in England. What was the consequence ? 
Innocent laid John's kingdom under the bann. A 
stop was put to divine worship; the churches were 
shut in every parish; all the sacraments, except 
baptism, were superseded ; the dead were buried in 
the high ways, without any sacred rites. Several, 
however, of the better and more learned clergy, 
indignantly refused obedience to this detestable inter- 
dict; and the pope accordingly proceeded to further 
measures. In 1209, he excommunicated John; and 
two years afterwards, issued a bull, absolving all his 
subjects from their allegiance, and ordering all per- 
sons to avoid him. The next year, the enraged pope 
assembled a council of cardinals and bishops, deposed 
John, declared the throne of England vacant; and 
ordered the king of France to take it, and add it to 
his own. The French king was ready enough to 
do this; he assembled an army; — John assembled 
another to oppose him ; and had he been a monarch 
of an enlightened mind and steady fortitude, England 
would have been rescued from popish thraldom, and 
the reformation accelerated by some ages. But 
Pandolph, the pope's legate, arriving in England, so 
succeeded by his artful representations of the power 
of France, and the defection of John's own subjects, 
that his courage broke down, and he submitted to the 
most abject humiliations. He promised, among other 
things, that he would submit himself entirely to the 
judgment of the pope ; that he would acknowledge 
Langton for primate ; that he would restore all the 
exiled clergy and laity who had been banished on 
account of the contest ; make them full restitution of 
their goods, and compensation for all damages, and 
instantly consign eight thousand pounds in part of 



IN ALL AGES. 141 

payment ; and that any one outlawed, or imprisoned 
for his adherence to the pope, should he instantly 
received to grace and favour. He did homage to the 
pope; resigned his crown to him; and again received 
it from him as a gift ; and bound himself to pay seven 
hundred marks annually for England, and three 
hundred for Ireland : and consented that any of his 
successors who refused to pay it, should forfeit all 
right to the throne. All this was transacted in a 
public assembly in the house of the Templars at 
Dover, — for the popish priests always took care that 
refractory kings should suffer the most public and 
excruciating degradations ; and the legate, after 
having kept the crown and sceptre five whole days, 
returned them, as by special favour of the pope. 
John, however, presented a sum of money in token of 
his dependence, which the proud prelate trod under 
his feet. 

In reviewing these things, one is ready to exclaim, 
can it really be England in which such scenes have 
been exhibited, and suffered by Englishmen ? Thanks 
to the progress of knowledge, which has crushed the 
hydra-head of such monstrous priestcraft ! 

The atrocities of popery were on a par with its 
arrogance. In every age it has been ready with the 
fire and the fagot; and every one who dared to 
dissent from its opinions, was put to death with the 
cruellest brutality. We have already adverted to its 
treatment of learned men, whose discoveries tended to 
shake its power over the public mind. Galileo's forced 
renunciation of what he knew to be the truth — the 
verity of the Copernican system — has been a popular 
theme in every age. 

They, bore 

His chained limbs to a dreary tower, 

In the midst of a city vast and wide. 

For he, they said, from his mind had bent 



142 PRIESTCRAFT 

Against their gods keen blasphemy, 

For which, though his soul must roasted be 

In hell's red lakes immortally, 

Yet even on earth must he abide 

The vengeance of their slaves ! a trial 

I think men call it. 

Shelley. 

He succumbed in the trial — he recanted the truth 
openly; yet as he rose from his knees before his 
stupid judges, he whispered to a friend — e pur si 
muove! it does move though ! Yes ! it moved ! — the 
world moved, and that in more respects than one ; and 
popery is become a wreck and a scorn, and man and 
knowledge have triumphed. 

Fear not, that the tyrants shall rule for ever, 
Or the priests of the bloody faith : 
They stand on the brink of that mighty river, 
Whose waves they have tainted with death. 
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, 
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells, 
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, 
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity. 

Shelley. 

The reformers became their victims in most in- 
stances ; and if Wycliffe escaped, his remains received 
the implacable resentment of the sacerdotal spirit. 
They were dug up; burnt, and scattered, on the 
waters of the neighbouring river, whence they floated 
to the ocean, and became the seeds of life and re- 
sistance to papal despotism in myriads of minds in 
all regions. A list of all the victims who have 
perished by papal cruelty would amount to some 
millions. Even in England, in the reign of Queen 
Mary, when this horrid religion was restored for a 
short space, two hundred and seventy persons were 
brought to the stake, besides those who were punished 
by fines, imprisonments, and confiscations. Amongst 
those who suffered by fire were five bishops, twenty- 



IN ALL AGES. 143 

one clergymen, eight lay gentlemen, eighty-four 
tradesmen, one hundred husbandmen, servants and 
labourers, fifty-five women, and four children. This 
persevering cruelty appears astonishing, yet is much 
inferior to what has been practised in other countries. 
A great author, Father Paul, computes that in the 
Netherlands alone, from the time that the edict of 
Charles V. was promulgated against the reformers, 
there had been fifty thousand persons hanged, be- 
headed, buried alive, or burnt on account of religion ; 
and in France a great number. 

The Massacre of St. Bartholomew will remain to 
the end of time in characters of infamy on the history 
of France. This horrid carnage, which was an 
attempt to exterminate the protestants, commenced 
at Paris on the 24th of August, 1572, by the secret 
orders of Charles IX, at the instigation of the Queen 
Dowager of Medici. The Queen of Navarre was 
poisoned by order of the court. About daybreak, says 
Thuanus, upon the toll of the great bell of the church 
of St. Germain, the butchery began. Coligni, admiral 
of France, was basely murdered in his own house ; 
and then thrown out of the windows, to gratify the 
malice of the Duke of Guise. His head was cut 
off, and sent to the king and queen-mother ; and his 
body, after a thousand indignities offered to it, hung 
up by the feet on a gibbet. After this the murderers 
ravaged the whole city, and butchered, in three days, 
10,000 lords, gentlemen, and people of all ranks. 
A horrible scene, when the very streets and passages 
resounded with the noise of those who met together 
for murder and plunder ; the groans of the dying, the 
shrieks of those about to be butchered, were every- 
where heard. The bodies of the slain were thrown 
out of the windows ; the courts and chambers filled 
with them : the dead bodies of others dragged along 



144 PRIESTCRAFT 

the streets ; their blood running in torrents down the 
channels to the river : an innumerable multitude of 
men, women, and children involved in one common 
destruction ; and the gates of the king's palace be- 
smeared with their blood. 

From Paris, the massacre spread through the pro- 
vinces, throughout nearly the whole kingdom. In 
Meaux they threw above two hundred into gaol ; 
ill-treated and then killed a great number of women ; 
plundered the houses of the protestants, and then 
exercised their fury on their prisoners ; calling them 
out, one by one, and butchering them as sheep for 
the market. The bodies of some were flung into the 
Maine, and others into ditches. The same cruelties 
were practised at Orleans, Angers, Troyes, Bourges, 
La Charite, and especially Lyons, where they in- 
humanly destroyed above eight hundred protestants ; 
children, hanging on their parents' necks ; parents 
embracing their children ; putting ropes round the 
necks of some, dragging them through the streets, 
and flinging them half dead into the river. The 
soldiers and very executioners refused, says a de- 
tailed account of this transaction, in the first volume 
of the Harleian Miscellany, to partake in this hellish 
carnage, and the butchers, and lowest populace were 
admitted to the prisons, where they chopped off the 
hands, feet, and noses of the captives, and derided 
their agonies, as they mangled them. 

When the news arrived at Rome, where the letters 
of the pope's legate, read in assembly of the cardi- 
nals, gave assurance that all this was done by com- 
mand of the king, the joy was excessive ; and it 
was instantly decreed that the pope and cardinals 
should march to the church of St. Mark in solemn 
procession, and return God thanks for so great a 
blessing conferred on the see of Rome and the 



IN ALL AGES. 145 

Christian world ! That high mass should be cele- 
brated, the pope and all his cardinals attending ; a 
jubilee should be published throughout the Christian 
world. The cannon of St. Angelo were fired, and 
the city illuminated as for a most splendid victory. 

But even this was exceeded by the unrestrained 
vengeance of the great Roman An ti- Christ against 
the poor Vaudois, a simple people of Piedmont, 
who from the Apostolic age had preserved the purity 
of the faith, and refused to bow to the swollen pride 
and worse than pagan idolatry of Rome. These 
primitive people were, from age to age, persecuted 
with fire and sword ; their own prince was stirred 
up and compelled to become against them, the 
butcher of the Roman pontiff. They were hunted 
from their houses ; suffocated in caves with flaming 
straw by hundreds ; their wives and children massa- 
cred without mercy : — but in vain ! They continued 
through all ; and still continue, as may be seen by 
Mr. Gillies' most interesting account of his visit to 
them ; and their sufferings have been immortalized 
in the fiery burst of Milton's indignation. 

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones 
Lie bleaching on the Alpine mountains cold ; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones, 
Forget not ; in thy book record their groans 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold 
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, who rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
To Heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields where still doth sway 
The triple tyrant ; that from these may grow 
A hundred fold, who having learned thy way, 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 

Milton did not content himself with thus venting 
his indignation; he made such representations to 

L 



146 PRIESTCRAFT 

Cromwell of the situation of these suffering people 
that the Protector zealously interceded for them with 
the Duke of Savoy; but with too little effect. 

In the same spirit the papal tyrant quenched the 
literature of the Troubadours, which exerted a faint, 
but pleasant twilight gleam in the 13th century; and 
was highly influential in the revival of poetry, by 
exciting the spirit of Petrarch, and through him of 
Chaucer, and the following English poets. This 
light, Rome put out by exterminating the Provencal 
people in a war, so singular and expressive of the 
nature of priestcraft, when full grown, that I shall 
give a brief account of it, principally from Sismondi's 
Literature of the South of Europe, with a few par- 
ticulars from Milner's venerable History of the Church 
of Christ. 

The excessive corruption of the clergy had furnished 
a subject for the satirical powers of the Troubadours. 
The cupidity, the dissimulation, and the baseness of 
that body, had rendered them odious both to the 
nobility and the people. The priests and the monks 
incessantly employed themselves in despoiling the 
sick, the widowed, and the fatherless, and indeed all 
whom age, or weakness, or misfortune placed within 
their grasp; while they squandered in debauchery 
and drunkenness, the money which they extorted by 
the most shameful artifices. If God, said Raymond 
de Castelnau, will the black monks to be unrivalled 
in their good eating and their amours, and the white 
monks in their lying bulls, and the Templars and 
Hospitallers in pride, and the canons in usury, I hold 
St. Peter and St. Andrew to have been egregious 
fools for suffering so much for the sake of God, since 
all these people also are to be saved. The gentry 
had imbibed such contempt for the clergy, that they 
would not educate their children to the priesthood, 



IN ALL AGES. 147 

but gave their livings to their servants and bailiffs. 
The persecutions of Theodora in 845, and of Basil in 
867 and 886, after having effected the destruction of 
more than a hundred thousand victims, compelled the 
remainder to seek refuge, some amongst the Mussel- 
mans, and others amongst the Bulgarians. Once 
out of the pale of persecution, their faith, of a purer 
and simpler kind, made rapid progress. In Languedoc 
and Lombardy the name of Paterins was given them, 
on account of the sufferings to which they were 
exposed wherever the papal power extended; and 
they afterwards received the name of Albigenses, from 
the numbers that inhabited the diocese of Alby. 

Missionaries were dispatched into Higher Langue- 
doc in 1147 and 1181, to convert these heretics; but 
with little success. Every day the reformed opinions 
gained ground, and Bertrand de Saissac, the tutor of 
the young Viscount of Beziers, himself adopted them. 
At length Innocent III. resolving to destroy these 
sectaries, whom he had exterminated in Italy, sent, 
in 1198, two Cistercian monks with the authority of 
legates d latere, to discover and bring them to justice. 
The monks, ambitious of extending their already 
unprecedented powers, not contented with merely 
attacking the heretics, quarrelled with all the regular 
clergy, who had attempted to soften their proceedings. 
They suspended the Archbishop of Narbonne, and 
the Bishop of Beziers ; and degraded the Bishops of 
Toulouse and of Veviers. Pierre de Castelnau, the 
most eager of the legates, accused Raymond of 
Toulouse of protecting the heretics, because that 
prince, being of a mild disposition, refused to lend 
himself to the destruction of his subjects. The anger 
of the priest, at length led him to excommunicate the 
count, and place his estates under interdict : and he 
proceeded to such irritating insolence, that one of the 

l 2 



148 PRIESTCRAFT 

count's followers, in his indignation, pursued him to 
the banks of the Rhone, and killed him. This 
crowned the misfortunes of Languedoc. It gave 
Innocent a pretext to proceed to bloodshed, and he 
took instant advantage of it. He addressed a letter 
to the king of France; to all the princes and most 
powerful barons, as well as to the metropolitan bishops, 
exhorting them to vengeance, and to the extirpation 
of heresy. All the indulgences and pardons, which 
were usually granted to the crusaders, were promised 
to those who exterminated these unbelievers. Three 
hundred thousand pilgrims, induced by the united 
motives of avarice and superstition, filled the country 
of the Albigenses with carnage and confusion for a 
number of years. The reader who is not versed in 
history of this kind, can scarcely conceive the scenes 
of baseness, perfidy, barbarity, indecency, and hypo- 
crisy, over which Innocent presided ; and which were 
conducted partly by his legates, and partly by the 
infamous Simon de Montford. Raymond VI. ter- 
rified at this storm, submitted to every thing required 
of him; but Raymond Roger, Viscount of Beziers, 
indignantly refused to give up the cause of his 
subjects. He encouraged them to resist; shut him- 
self up in Carcassone, and gave Beziers to the care of 
his lieutenants. Beziers was taken by assault in 
July, 1209, and fifteen thousand inhabitants, accord- 
to the Cistercian monk, or sixty thousand according 
to others, were put to the sword. This Cistercian 
monk was asked before the city was taken, how he 
could separate the heretics from the catholics ? he 
replied, " Kill all; God vjillknoiv his own!" 

The brave young Viscount of Beziers did not 
shrink ; he still defended Carcassone. Peter II. of 
Arragon attempted to make terms for him with his 
monkish besiegers, but all that they would grant was, 



IN ALL AGES. 149 

to allow thirteen of the inhabitants, including the 
count, to leave the city ; the remainder were reserved 
for a butchery like that of Beziers. The viscount 
declared he would be flayed alive rather than submit 
to such terms. He was, at length, betrayed ; poi- 
soned in prison ; four hundred of his people burnt, 
and fifty hanged. Simon de Montford, the most 
ferocious monster of all the crusaders, received from 
the legate, the viscount's title ; and devastated the 
whole of the south of France with the most frightful 
wars. They who escaped from the sacking of the 
town were sacrificed by the fagot. From 1209 to 
1229, nothing was seen but massacres and tortures. 
Religion was overthrown ; knowledge extinguished ; 
and humanity trodden under foot. In the midst of 
these horrors, the ancient house of Toulouse became 
extinct. 

Connected with this melancholy history, is one of 
the last horrid instruments of Papal tyranny which 
remains to be mentioned — The Inquisition. These 
monks, Arnold Ranier and Pierre Castelnau, were 
followed by the notorious Spaniard, Dominic, and 
others, who, proceeding to seek out and execute 
heretics, gained the name of Inquisitors. On their 
return from this infernal expedition, the Popes were 
so sensible of their services, that they established 
similar tribunals in different places. In time, Italy, 
Spain, and other countries, w r ere cursed with these 
hellish institutions ; and their history is one of the 
most. awful horror that can affright the human soul. 
But these, and the Jesuits, demand a separate notice. 



150 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER XIV. 

JESUITS AND INQUISITORS. 



The land in which I lived, by a fell bane 
Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side, 
And stabled in our homes — until the chain 
Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide 
That blasting curse, men had no shame — all vied 
In evil, slave and despot ; fear with lust, 
Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied, 
Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust, 
Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust. 
Revolt of Islam. 
But onward moved the melancholy train 

In their false creeds, in fiery pangs to die. 
This was the solemn sacrifice of Spain — 

Heaven's offering from the land of chivalry ! 

The Forest Sanctuary. 



We have passed rapidly through strange scenes of 
priestly wickedness and bloodshed, — but of all the 
agents of the devil which were ever spawned in the 
black dens of that earthly pandemonium, the Papal 
Church, none can compare with the Jesuits and 
Inquisitors. 

The Jesuits arose in the latter days of popery. 
Their doctrines were those of popery grown to 
thorough ripeness. They seemed created to shew to 
what lengths that system could be carried, and to 
crown it, in conjunction with their fellow demons of 



IN ALL AGES. 151 

the Inquisition, with that full measure of popular 
indignation which should hasten its great " immedi- 
cable wound" from the hand of Luther. The Jesuits 
took up the favourite dogmas of the Papal Church : 
that the end sanctifies the means — that evil may be 
done that good may come of it — and pushed them to 
that degree which causes the good and the simple to 
stand in astonishment at the daring acts and adroit 
casuistry of " bold bad men." All oaths, all obli- 
gations, all morality, all religion, according to their 
creed, were to be adopted or set aside, just as it 
suited the object they had in view. They might 
cheat and lie, steal and kill, all for righteousness' 
sake. They embodied in practice the pithy maxims 
of Hudibras. 

That saints may claim a dispensation 

To swear and forswear on occasion, 

I doubt not but it will appear 

With pregnant light : the point is clear. 

Oaths are but words, and words but wind ; 

Too feeble instruments to bind. 

But saints whom oaths and vows oblige, 

Know little of their privilege. 

For if the devil, to serve his turn, 

Can tell truth ; why the saints should scorn 

When it serves theirs to swear and lie, 

I think there 's little reason why. 

Else he has a greater power than they, 

Which 't were impiety to say. 

They thought with him, 

The Public Faith, which every one 
Is bound to observe, is kept by none. 
And if that go for nothing, why 
Should Private Faith have such a tie? 
Oaths were not purposed more than law, 
To keep the good and just in awe, 
But to confine the bad and sinful, 
Like mortal cattle in a pinfold. 



152 PRIESTCRAFT 

Then why should we ourselves abridge 
And curtail our own privilege ? 
Quakers that, like dark lanterns bear 
Their light within them, will not swear. 
Their gospel is an accidence 
By which they construe conscience. 
And hold no sin so deeply red 
As that of breaking Priscian's head — 
The head and founder of their order, 
That stirring hats held worse than murder. 
These thinking they 're obliged to troth 
In swearing, will not take an oath : 
Like mules, who if they 've not their will 
To keep their own pace, stand stock still, 
But they are weak, and little know 
What freeborn consciences may do. 

'T is the temptation of the devil 

That makes all human actions evil. 

For saints may do the same things by 

The spirit in sincerity, 

Which other men are tempted to, 

And at the devil's instance do. 

And yet the actions be contrary, 

Just as the saints and wicked vary. 

For as on land there is no beast 

But in some fish at sea 's expressed, 

So in the wicked there 's no vice 

Of which the saints have not a spice : 

And yet that thing that 's pious in 

The one, in 't other is a sin. 

Is 't not ridiculous and nonsense 

A saint should be a slave to conscience ! 

These were their precious tenets — the quintessence 
of the wisdom of this world, to which that of the 
children of light is unprofitable foolishness. Their 
founder, Ignatius Loyala, a Spaniard — an ominous 
name when connected with religion, — was a most acute 
and happy genius in his way. He saw the advan- 
tages which the Popes had derived from their accom- 
modating ecclesiastical logic, and he conceived the 
felicitous idea of creating a sort of second series of 



IN ALL AGES. 153 

Popes, taught and enlightened by the old series. He 
adopted their facile code of morals, and he even out- 
went them in the exquisite finesse of his policy. 
The head of this system was to take the name of 
General of the Order ; his emissaries were to go forth 
into all kingdoms ; to insinuate themselves into all 
cities, houses, and secret hearts of the people. They 
were to adopt all shapes, to follow all circumstances ; 
to wear an outside of peculiar mildness, and an inner- 
man of subtle observance ; to have the exterior of 
the dove — the interior of the serpent. With all this 
sequacity, flexibility and disguise, they succeeded 
wonderfully. What, indeed, could resist them, when 
they came in all shapes, and with all pretences ; — at 
the first glimpse of discovery of their real designs, 
or of popular indignation, ready to eat up their 
words, and swear that they were anything but 
what they really were? But when they found 
themselves in any degree of strength, — when they 
were desirous of carrying some point that com- 
pliance and duplicity could not carry, — who so 
dogged and insolent as they ? They bearded people, 
magistrates, kings, — the pope himself, with the most 
immoveable assurance. The popes, who regarded 
them as active maintainers of ignorance and obe- 
dience, were desirous to tolerate them as much as 
possible. But they often found it a severe task for 
their patience. They were in the condition of a man 
who has tamed a serpent or a lion ; they might soothe 
the beast by coaxing, perhaps, but were every mo- 
ment in danger of rousing its ferocity, and even of 
falling before its rage. When struck at, they stood 
and hissed, and fought with true snaky pertinacity ; 
but if they saw actual destruction coming, they 
suddenly disappeared, only to raise their hydra 
heads in a thousand other places. Expelled from 



154 PRIESTCRAFT 

states in their own character of Jesuits, they came 
back in all sorts of disguises ; and, instead of open 
enemies, the people and their governors had to 
encounter the secret influence of their poison, and 
their stings which struck in the dark. They insi- 
nuated themselves into colleges and schools under 
false colours, till they could seize upon them and 
convert them into engines of their designs. They 
became confessors, especially of women, that they 
might learn all the secrets of their husbands ; of 
kings and ministers, to learn those of states : all the 
intelligence thus gathered was regularly transmitted 
to the General from every kingdom, so that he and his 
counsellors knew the condition and intentions of all 
nations ; and, at a moment's notice, his creatures 
were ready to seize upon universities, churches, 
governments, or whatever they desired. They en- 
tered into trade, and were scattered all over the 
world, wearing no outward appearance but that of 
merchants ; yet keeping up a secret correspondence 
with one another, and with their General, and trans- 
mitting intelligence and wealth from all quarters of 
the globe. They were not satisfied with exercising 
their arts over the Christian world ; they proceeded 
into all pagan countries as missionaries, and sought 
to bring the savages of Asia, Africa, and America 
under their dominion. They evidently had formed 
the bold design of acquiring the spiritual and political 
sovereignty of the world : but, with all their subtlety — 
their ambition and their unprincipled grasping at 
power so alarmed and disgusted all people, that their 
history is a continual alternation of their growing into 
numbers and strength, and of their expulsion from 
almost every kingdom that can be named. England, 
France, Spain, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Italy, 
the East and the West Indies, America, North and 



IN ALL AGES. 155 

South, in all these countries their arts were re- 
peatedly tried, and they were as repeatedly expelled 
with ignominy and vengeance. 

The rapidity with which they spread themselves, is 
shewn by the following statement from the memorial 
presented by the University of Paris to the king in 
1724: — " In 1540, when they presented their peti- 
tions to Paul III., they only appeared in the number 
of ten. In 1543 they were not more than twenty- 
four. In 1545 they had only ten houses; but, in 
1549 they had two provinces : one in Spain, and the 
other in Portugal, and twenty-two houses ; and at the 
death of Ignatius, in 1556, they had twelve large 
provinces. In 1608, Bibadeneira reckoned twenty- 
nine provinces, and two vice-provinces ; twenty-one 
houses of profession ; two hundred and ninety-three 
colleges ; thirty-three houses of probation ; ninety- 
three other residences, and ten thousand five hundred 
and eighty-one Jesuits. In the catalogue printed at 
Rome in 1629, are found thirty-five provinces, two 
vice-provinces, thirty-three houses of profession, 
five hundred and seventy-eight colleges, forty-eight 
houses of probation, eighty-eight seminaries, one 
hundred and sixty residences, one hundred and six 
missions, and, in all, seventeen thousand six hundred 
and fifty-five Jesuits, of whom seven thousand eight 
hundred and seventy were priests. At last, according 
to the calculation of Father Jouvency, they had, in 
1710, twenty-four houses of profession, fifty-nine 
houses of probation, three hundred and forty resi- 
dences, six hundred and twelve colleges, of which 
above eighty were in France, two hundred missions, 
one hundred and fifty-seven seminaries and boarding- 
houses, and nineteen thousand nine hundred and 
ninety-eight Jesuits. 

On their mercantile concerns, M. Martin, governor 



156 PRIESTCRAFT 

of Pondicherry, observes, " It is certain that, next to 
the Dutch, the Jesuits carry on the greatest and most 
productive commerce in India. Their trade surpasses 
even that of the English, as well as that of the Por- 
tuguese, who established them in India. There may 
possibly, indeed, be some Jesuits who go there from 
pure religious motives ; but they are very few, and it is 
not such as those who know the grand secret of the 
company. Some among them are Jesuits secularized, 
who do not appear to be such, because they never 
wear the habit ; which is the reason why at Surat, 
Agra, Goa, and every where else, they are taken for 
real merchants of the countries whose names they 
bear : for it is certain that there are some of all 
nations, even of America and Turkey, and of every 
other which can be useful and necessary to the 
society. These disguised Jesuits are intriguing every- 
where. The secret intercourse which is preserved 
among them instructs them mutually in the merchan- 
dize which they ought to buy and sell, and with what 
nation they can most advantageously trade ; so that 
these masked Jesuits make an immense profit of the 
society, to which they are alone responsible, through 
the medium of those Jesuits who traverse the world 
in the habit of St. Ignatius, and enjoy the confidence, 
know the secrets, and act under the orders of the 
heads of Europe. These Jesuits, disguised and dis- 
persed over the whole earth, and who know each 
other by signs, like the Freemasons, invariably act 
upon one system. They send merchandize to other 
disguised Jesuits, who, having it thus at first hand, 
make a considerable profit of it for the society. This 
traffic is, however, very injurious to France. I have 
often written respecting it to the East India Com- 
pany trading here ; and I have received express 
orders from it (under Louis XIV.) to concede and 



IN ALL AGES. 157 

advance to these fathers whatever they might require 
of me. The Jesuit Tachard alone owes that com- 
pany, at this moment, *above four hundred and fifty 
thousand livres. Those Jesuits who, like Tachard, 
pass and repass between this quarter and Europe, are 
ambulatory directors and receivers of the bank and 
of the trade." 

" In the Antilles, " says Coudrette, " Lavalette, the 
Jesuit, has half the worth of the property for whose 
conveyance to France he undertakes. In Portugal 
the Jesuits had vessels employed exclusively in their 
service, which facts are established by the process of 
Cardinal Saldanha. All the accounts of travellers in 
the East Indies speak in the same way, with astonish- 
ment, of the extent of their commerce. In Europe, 
and even in France, they have banks in the most 
commercial cities, such as Marseilles, Paris, Genoa, 
and Rome. In addition to this, they publicly sell 
drugs in their houses ; and, in order to their sanction 
in this, they procured from Pope Gregory XIII. the 
privilege of exercising the art of medicine. Even in 
Rome, in spite of the opposition of the tradesmen, 
and the prohibitions of the Pope, they carry on trade 
in baking, grocery, etc. Let us imagine twenty 
thousand traders, dispersed over the world, from 
Japan to Brazil, from the Cape of Good Hope to the 
north, all correspondents of each other, all blindly 
subjected to one individual, and working for him 
alone ; conducting two hundred missions, which are 
so many factories ; six hundred and twelve colleges, 
and four hundred and twenty-three houses of profes- 
sors, noviciates, and residents, which are so many 
entrepots ; and then let us form an idea, if we can, of 
the produce of so vast an extent." 

There have not been wanting advocates for these 
persevering, intriguing priests ; who have represented 



158 PRIESTCRAFT 

them as merely labouring to promote religion amongst 
the civilized, and civilization amongst the savage 
nations. But what says all history ? What says the 
indignation of every realm which has ever harboured 
them ? That wherever they were, whatever they 
undertook, whether the education of youth in Europe, 
or that of the natives of savage lands, all their plans 
turned to one object — absolute dominion over the 
minds and bodies of their disciples. They seem to 
have taken a particular pleasure in breaking in upon 
the labours and in persecuting all other missionaries ; 
— and by their detestable and ambitious acts, Chris- 
tianity has been expelled from various regions where 
it was taking root. This was the case in Japan and 
China. Here they first thwarted the measures of 
other missionaries, then got all power into their 
hands, and finally were driven out with wrath by the 
natives. In China their suppression was connected 
with circumstances of peculiar aggravation. The 
Bishop of Nankin names two to the Pope whose 
vices had become public. " But the crime of Father 
Anthony Joseph, the superior of the mission, is yet 
more scandalous. This man has remained there eight 
years past, continually plunged in the abominable 
practice of sinning with women at the time they come 
to confess, and even in the place where he confessed 
them ; after which he gave them absolution, and ad- 
ministered the Sacrament to them ! He told them 
that these actions need not give them any concern, 
since all their Fathers, the Bishops, and the Pope 
himself, observed the same practice ! 

" All this was known to Christians and to Heathens. 
Some persons represented these crimes to the supe- 
riors of the Jesuits ; but the commissary whom they 
sent for the purpose, declared him innocent — I know 
not upon what pretence. While I was considering 



IN ALL AGES. 159 

the best means of punishing this man, the mandarins 
caused him to be arrested, suddenly, with two of his 
brethren, and about one hundred Christians. What 
occasioned still greater scandal, the mandarins, who 
had been some time acquainted with part of the facts, 
collected correct depositions to establish his crimes, 
and announced them at full length in their sentence, 
which they made public. He was condemned to 
death, with the other Jesuit, on the 22d of Septem- 
ber, 1748, and they were both strangled in prison. 
Of the hundred persons who were arrested with him, 
there was not one who did not renounce Christianity, 
and the Chinese missionary was the first to do so. 

For more than two hundred years they maintained 
a system of opposition and vexation to the bishops 
and missionaries of India, in the very face of the 
Pope's commands to the contrary. Of their attempt 
to establish an independent kingdom in Paraguay, 
every one has heard. Under pretence of preserving 
the Indians free from the vices of the Europeans, 
they forbade them to learn their language ; under 
pretence of protecting them from the oppressions of 
the Europeans, they regularly disciplined large bodies 
of them in arms. For them these simple creatures 
toiled, and their minds they moulded entirely to sub- 
serviency to them. They refused all Europeans, 
except their own confederates, entrance to the pro- 
vince ; and actually, on the authorities marching into 
it in the name of the Kings of Portugal and Spain, 
rose against them and attempted to expel them by 
force of arms. They hesitated not to send emissaries 
over to Europe to blow the flames of sedition there, 
and even attempted the life of the King of Portugal, 
in order to divert the efforts of their rightful monarchs 
from them ; but finally they were themselves sub- 
dued, and driven out of the country, to the total dis- 



160 PRIESTCRAFT 

sipation of their grand scheme of rebellion and empire. 
For those who have patience to read the scandalous 
and bloody squabbles of priests, there are copious 
details of these matters in the second volume of 
Southey's History of Brazil; and especially of their 
contests with Cardenas, the bishop. 

In Europe they signalized themselves by perpetual 
attempts against the peace of states, and the lives of 
monarchs. In Venice, in 1560, they excited great 
commotion, and were very near being driven away. 
They shewed great anxiety to confess the wives of 
the senators, for the purpose, it was believed, of 
acquiring the secrets of the republic. Trevisani, the 
Patriarch of Venice, says Sacchini, satisfied himself 
of the charge, and made other discoveries of still 
greater importance. In the Netherlands, in Portugal 
and Spain, they were busy in similar schemes, and 
with similar results. In Poland, they had the fortune 
to get a man of their order, Sigismund, upon the 
throne. He desired to introduce them into Sweden, 
where his uncle, Duke Charles, was his lieutenant. 
Charles remonstrated, in vain, that the people of 
Sweden would not endure the Jesuits : the king per- 
sisted, and the people took arms against him. He 
was beaten both by sea and land ; taken prisoner ; 
and only released on condition that he would assemble 
his states, and act in conjunction with them. He 
then escaped from Sweden, and strove to arm the 
Poles against the Swedes ; but they refused the alli- 
ance, and in the mean time his uncle seized upon his 
towns. 

With the continual attempts of these pertinacious 
wretches against the liberties of England, and the 
lives of Elizabeth and James I., every English reader 
is familiar: the names of Crichton, Garnett, Parry, 
Cullen, Gerard, and Tesmond, successively engaged 



IN ALL AGES. 161 

in the design of assassinating the protestant queen, or 
in the attempt to blow up our English Solomon and 
all his parliament, will for ever perpetuate their 
abhorrence in England; and in Ireland the general 
massacre of the protestants in 1641, which they were 
principally concerned in exciting, and similar proceed- 
ings in that country, will keep alive their remembrance 
there. But of all their atrocities there are none which 
more affect one with indignation, than their persecu- 
tions and murder of Henry III. and Henry IV. of 
France. In 1563, according to Mezerai, the famous 
catholic league took its rise, whose object was to 
extirpate the protestants in France. The Jesuits 
became the soul of this infamous federation. Henry 
III. assembled the states at Blois in 1579, for the 
purpose of dissolving this conspiracy ; and from that 
time, was marked for destruction. Sammier, a Jesuit, 
traversed Germany, Italy, and Spain, to excite the 
princes of those countries against him. Mattheiu, 
another, styled the courier of the league, made several 
journeys to the pope, to obtain a bull against him; 
and though the pope hesitated at this, he delivered 
his opinion, that the person of Henry should be 
secured, and his cities seized. Commolet and Rouillet 
were the trumpets of sedition. In the college of 
the Rue St. Jaques, the Jesuits met and conspired 
the murder of the king. It was there Baniere came 
to be stirred up by the doctrines of Varade, — and 
that Gurnard composed the writings, for which he was 
hung. It was there that the Sixteen signed an abso- 
lute cession of the kingdom to Philip of Spain ; and 
that Chastel acquired the lesson of parricide he after- 
wards acted upon. There Clement, animated by 
such horrible instructions, formed the resolve which 
he fulfilled on the 1st of August, 1589, the assassina- 
tion of Henry III. 

M 



162 PRIESTCRAFT 

Henry IV., a generous spirited and noble monarch, 
was educated in protestantism ; — this was enough to 
arouse their murderous and unappeasable hatred. It 
was almost by miracle that he escaped, then a youth, 
from the massacre of St. Bartholomew. On his 
coming to the throne, he was pursued by them with 
such continual animosity, that to allay their fury, he 
consented to embrace Catholicism. This produced no 
effect — he was a man of liberal opinions ; and such a 
man they could not tolerate. They made his life 
miserable; and at length nearly effected his murder 
by the knife of Baniere, at Melun, in August 1593. 
On the 27th of December, 1594, his life was again 
attempted by Chastel, another Jesuit. He struck at 
him with a knife, but missed his aim, and instead of 
killing him, only cut his lip, and struck out a tooth. 
This circumstance, and the ferment of infernal fanati- 
cism, which induced the papists and Jesuits to conti- 
nually seek the destruction of the king, caused the 
banishment of the whole order. This, however, did 
not mend the matter, as it regarded the king ; — he had 
only the same enemies in disguise, and, if possible, 
ten times more embittered. With that good nature 
which characterized him, he at length consented to 
allow them to return. It was in vain that Sully, his 
minister, represented to him that no kindness could 
soften such foes ; — he recalled them, and fell a victim 
to their instigations, being stabbed by Bavaillac, on 
May 14th, 1610. 

Many books had been written of late by the Jesuits, 
vindicating and commending the killing of kings, 
particularly the work of Mariana,' — De Bege et Begis 
Institutione, in which the killing of a king was termed 
a "laudable, glorious, and heroic action." It was by 
such writings that this assassin was spurred on to his 
diabolical act. Aubigny, his confessor, a Jesuit, when 



IN ALL AGES. 1G3 

confronted with the murderer, and charged with being 
privy to the design, at first denied knowing the 
man at all ; but when driven from that assertion, he 
declared that " God had given to some the gift of 
tongues, to others the gift of prophecy, and to him 
the gift of forgetting confessions." 

Such were the abominable principles which led 
them to these abominable actions. For a full account 
of this assassination, the reader may consult the 
fourth volume of Sully's Memoirs. So generally was 
the conspiracy known amongst the catholic subjects 
of this unfortunate monarch, that many people de- 
clared, on the day when the murder took place, that 
the king was then dying, though they were in distant 
places. An astrologer had foretold the very day and 
hour to the king, the manner of the act, and that it 
would take place in a coach. So much impressed 
was the king with his approaching fate, that he was 
frequently in great agony of mind, and would fain 
have put off the queen's coronation, which was about 
to take place at the time predicted. He had terrible 
dreams, and so also had the queen, waking in horror, 
and crying out the king was stabbed. All these 
things which the common mind loves to believe 
supernatural intimations, only shew to the more 
reflecting one, the audacity of these bloody wretches, 
who were so confident in their power of doing evil, 
that they spoke of it till it became a universal im- 
pression. 

From the terrible Jesuit there is but one step 
further in horror, and that is to the Inquisitor ! And, 
in fact, it can scarcely be called a step at all, for both 
characters are frequently combined in the same indi- 
vidual. Jesuits, it will be seen in all the histories of 
the inquisition, are as active as the Dominicans 
themselves, who claim the peculiar honour, or more 

m2 



164 PRIESTCRAFT 

properly infamy, of possessing, from the head of their 
order, the office of inquisitors ; that is, fiends incarnate. 
In speaking of the extermination of the Troubadours, 
we have already noticed the rise of the Inquisition. It 
was an institution so congenial to the nature of popery, 
that its holy offices — its offices of mercy, as they 
were called in that spirit of devilish abuse of Chris- 
tianity in which they were conceived, were speedily 
to be found in various countries of Europe, Asia, and 
America, but distinguished most fearfully in Spain. 
Their horrors have been made familiar to the public 
mind by the writers of romance, especially by Mrs. 
Ratcliffe; but all the powers of romance have not 
been able to overcolour the reality. Spain has always 
claimed and gloried in the supremacy of her inquisi- 
tion. She has strenuously contended with the pope 
for it ; and has deemed it so national an honour, as to 
parade the auto-da-fe as one of her most fascinating 
spectacles. Her kings, her queens, her princes, and 
nobles, have assembled with enthusiasm to witness 
them. So great a treat did the Spaniards formerly 
consider them, that Llorente states that on February 
25th, 1560, one was celebrated by the inquisitors of 
Toledo, in which several persons were burnt, with 
some effigies, and a great number subjected to 
penances; and this was performed to entertain the 
new queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry II. of France, 
a girl of thirteen years of age, accustomed in her own 
country to brilliant festivals suitable to her rank and 
age. So completely may priestcraft brutalize a nation, 
and so completely has this devilish institution stamped 
the Spanish character, naturally ardent and chivalric, 
with gloomy horror, that both Llorente and Limborch 
represent ladies witnessing the agonizing tortures of 
men and women expiring in flames, with transports of 
delight. By means of this infernal machine, the 



IN ALL AGES. 165 

Spanish kings have contrived to crush the mind of the 
country; to check the growth of literature; to nourish 
a spirit of ferocity ; and to produce a race of people the 
slaves of the worst government, and the most ignorant 
and bigoted priests. To this cause in fact, Spain owes 
its present misery and degradation. Llorente, whose 
work is founded on official documents, drawn from 
the archives of the inquisition itself, when he was 
secretary to it, gives a long list of the learned and 
ingenious Spaniards whom it has persecuted and 
condemned. The ostensible object of its early exer- 
tions, was to extirpate the Jews, Moors and Morescoes ; 
and so successful were its efforts, that Llorente cal- 
culates that in one hundred and nineteen years it 
deprived Spain of three millions of inhabitants. 
Mariana says 170,000 families of Jews were banished, 
and the rest sold for slaves. They entered Portugal, 
but were again commanded by the Portuguese king to 
quit that realm also. The Moors were suffered to 
depart ; but as the Jews were preparing to do so, the 
king commanded that all those who were not more 
than fourteen years old, should be taken from their 
parents and educated in the Christian religion. It 
was a most afflicting thing, to see children snatched 
from the embraces of their mothers ; and fathers em- 
bracing their children, torn from them, and even 
beaten with clubs ; to hear the dreadful cries they 
made, and every place filled with the lamentations 
and yells of women. Many through indignation, 
threw their sons into pits, and others killed them with 
their own hands. Thus prevented on the one hand 
from embarking, and on the other oppressed and per- 
secuted, many feigned conversion, to escape from their 
miseries. The cruelties practised on these people, 
to compel them to embrace a religion which was 
thus represented as only fit for devils, make one's 



166 PRIESTCRAFT 

blood boil to read them. The Reformation appeared, 
and found these monsters fresh employment. The 
doctrines of Luther appear to have made so rapid a 
progress scarcely in any country as in Spain. Num- 
bers of the highest ranks, of the most intelligent 
ladies, of ecclesiastics, embraced the principles of the 
reformer ; and, had it not been for the inquisition, 
that country might now have figured in the front of 
Europe with a more glorious aspect, as a great and 
enlightened state, than it did under Charles V. The 
inquisition had the satisfaction of extinguishing the 
revived flame of Christianity, and of reducing Spain 
to its present deplorable condition. All the fury and 
strength of that great engine of hell was brought to 
bear upon it : its auto-da-fe were crowded with 
Lutheran heretics ; its fires consumed them ; its 
secret cells devoured them — men, women, children 
were swept into its unfathomable gulph of destruction. 
Priestly malice triumphed over truth and virtue. 

To such gigantic stature of power did this dismal 
institution attain, that no one was safe from its fangs. 
The confiscation of the goods of its victims whetted 
the appetite of priestly avarice so keenly, that a man 
to be guilty of heresy had only to be rich. Llorente 
gives several cases of English merchants, who were 
pounced upon by it in defiance of the law of nations. 
On one occasion Oliver Cromwell had to intercede for 
an English consul, whom they had got into their 
dens. The king replied, he had no power over the 
inquisition. " Then," added Cromwell, in a second 
message, "if you have no power over the inquisition, 
I will declare war against it." The threat was effec- 
tual. So little power had the Spanish kings over it, 
indeed, that it did not hesitate to accuse them ; and 
Llorente's lists are full of nobles, privy councillors, 
knights, magistrates, military commanders, and ladies 



IN ALL AGES. 167 

of the highest birth, on whom these daring priests 
laid their hands, and loaded them with chains and 
infamy. It seemed a peculiar delight to them to 
insult and degrade those who had moved in the most 
distinguished spheres. In Portugal, says Limborch, 
all the prisoners, men and women, without any 
regard to birth or dignity, are shaved the first or 
second day of their imprisonment. Each prisoner has 
two pots of water every day : one to wash, and the 
other to drink ; a besom to cleanse his cell, and a mat 
of rushes to lie upon. 

The same historian gives, in a few passages, a vivid 
summary of the operations of this odious institution. 
" In countries where the inquisition has existed, the 
bare idea of its progress damped the most ardent 
mind. Formidable and ferocious as the rapacious 
tiger, who from the gloomy thicket surveys his unsus- 
pecting prey, until the favoured moment arrives in 
which he may plunge forward and consummate its 
destruction, the inquisition meditates in secret and in 
silence its horrific projects. In the deepest seclu- 
sion the calumniator propounds his charge ; with 
anxious vigilance the creatures of its power regard 
its unhappy victim. Not a whisper is heard, or the 
least hint of insecurity given, until at the dead of 
night a band of savage monsters surround the dwell- 
ing ; they demand an entrance : — upon the inquiry, by 
whom is this required ? the answer is, " the holy 
office. " In an instant all the ties of nature appear 
as if dissolved, and either through the complete do- 
minion of superstition, or the conviction that resist- 
ance would be vain, the master, parent, husband is 
resigned. From the bosom of his family, and bereft 
of all domestic comforts, he enters the inquisition 
house ; its ponderous doors are closed, and hope ex- 



168 PRIESTCRAFT 

eluded — perhaps for ever. Immured in a noisome 
vault, surrounded by impenetrable walls, he is left 
alone ; a prey to all the sad reflections of a miserable 
outcast. If he venture to inquire the reason of his 
fate, he is told, that silence and secresy are here 
inviolable. Accustomed to the conveniences of social 
life, and perhaps of a superior station, he is now 
reduced to the most miserable expedients. The most 
menial offices now devolve upon him; while the cruel 
reflection obtrudes itself upon his mind, that his 
family may, ere long, be reduced to indigence by an 
act of inquisitorial confiscation." And with such 
fiendish ingenuity is the punishment of confiscation 
aggravated, that it is followed as of necessary conse- 
quence, by the person being rendered for ever 
infamous, — that is, he is incapable of holding office 
of any kind ; his children are disinherited, and made 
infamous, or incapable to the second generation by 
the father's side, and first by the mother's. All his 
relations are liberated from their obligations to him, 
or connexion with him ; his children are freed from 
his control ; his wife is liberated from her marriage 
vows ; his servants or vassals are freed from their 
servitude ; he is compelled to answer inquiries of 
others on any affair, but no one need answer him. 
He has no protection from the laws, and no remedy 
against oppression or injustice. His very children, 
brothers and sisters, ought to abandon him ; and the 
only way of a son escaping the infamy of his father, is 
by being the first to accuse him to the tribunal of the 
inquisition. 

Then come the secret examinations, the accusa- 
tions from unknown sources, the intimidations, — the 
torture ! The torture has fLye degrees : — first, being 
threatened to be tortured: secondly, being carried 



IN ALL AGES. 169 

to the place of torture : thirdly, by stripping and 
binding : fourthly, the being hoisted on the rack : 
fifthly, squassation. 

The stripping is performed without regard to 
humanity or honour, not only to men, but to women 
and virgins. As to squassation, it is thus performed : 
the prisoner has his hands tied behind his back, and 
weights tied to his feet, and then he is drawn up on 
high, till his head reaches the very pulley. He is kept 
hanging in this manner for some time, that by the great- 
ness of the weight hanging at his feet, all his joints 
and limbs may be dreadfully stretched, and on a sud- 
den he is let down with a jerk, by slackening the rope, 
but kept from coming quite to the ground ; by which 
terrible shake his arms and legs are all disjointed^ 
whereby he is put to the most exquisite pain; the 
shock which he receives by the sudden stop put to 
his fall, and the weight at his feet, stretching his whole 
body more intensely and cruelly. According to the 
orders of the inquisition, this squassation is repeated 
once, twice, or three times in the space of an hour. 

Another mode of torture is, by covering the mouth 
and nostrils with a thin cloth, so that the victim is 
scarcely able to breathe through them ; then, letting 
fall from on high water, drop by drop, on his mouth, 
which so easily sinks through the cloth to the bottom 
of his throat, so that it is impossible for him to 
breathe, his mouth being filled with water, his nostrils 
with the cloth ; so that the poor wretch is in the 
agony of death. When this cloth is pulled out of his 
mouth, as it often is, to answer questions, it is all 
over water and blood, and is like pulling his bowels 
through his mouth. All this time he is lying in 
what is called the wooden-horse ; that is, a trough 
across which a bar is placed, on which the man's 
back rests, instead of on the bottom, while his arms, 



170 PRIESTCRAFT 

shins, and thighs are tied round with small cords, 
drawn tight by screws, till they cut to the very 
bones. 

The physician Orobio, a Jew, gave a most lively 
account of the torture practised upon him after he 
had lain in his dungeon three years. He was brought 
to the place of torture. It was towards evening. 
It was a large underground room, arched, and the 
walls covered with black hangings. The candle- 
sticks were fastened to the wall, and the whole 
enlightened with candles placed in them. At one 
end there was an enclosed place, like a closet, where 
the inquisitor and notary sate at a table : so that the 
place seemed to him the very mansion of death, 
everything appearing so terrible and so awful. After 
some preliminary torments, such as tying his thumbs 
with small cords till the blood spouted out from 
beneath the nails ; they fastened him with small 
cords, by means of little iron pulleys, to a wall as 
he sate upon a bench ; then drawing the cords which 
fastened his fingers and toes with great violence, they 
drew the bench from under him, and left him sus- 
pended in the strings, till he seemed to be dissolving 
in flame, such was his agony. Then they brought a 
sort of ladder and struck it against his shins, giving 
five violent strokes at once ; under the exquisite pain 
of which he fainted away. They then screwed up 
his cords with fresh violence, and tied others so near 
that they slid into the gashes the first had made, and 
produced such an effusion of blood that they sup- 
posed him dying. On finding, however, that he was 
not, they repeated the torture once more, and then 
remanded him to his cell !" To imagine men prac- 
tising these cruelties on men, and that in the outraged 
name of Christ, the fountain of love and mercy, is 
revolting enough ; but to read of them mangling, dis- 



IN ALL AGES. 171 

locating, and dashing to pieces the delicate frames of 
young and lovely women, of which Llorente gives 
various instances, puts the climax to our abhorrent 
indignation. Such, in particular, were the treat- 
ment of Jane Bohorques, and her attendant, a young 
Lutheran girl, afterwards burnt at the auto-da-fe.* 

A word on these auto-da-fe, and we will escape 
from these horrors. Dr. Geddes' account of the 
manner of celebrating them, as quoted in Limborch, 
is one of the best and most condensed. " In the 
morning of the day the prisoners are all brought into 
a great hall, where they have the habits put on they 
are to wear in the procession, which begins to come 
out of the inquisition about nine o'clock in the 
morning. 

" The first in the procession are the Dominicans, 
who carry the standard of the inquisition, which 
on the one side hath their founder Dominic's pic- 
ture, and on the other side the cross between an 
olive tree and a sword, with this motto, ' Justitia 
et Miserecordia.' Next after the Dominicans come 
the penitents, some with benitoes and some with- 
out, according to the nature of their crimes. They 
are all in black coats without sleeves, and bare- 
footed, with a wax candle in their hands. Next 
come the penitents who have narrowly escaped being 
burnt, who, over their black coat have flames painted 
with their points turned downwards, to signify their 

* The methods of torture are not merely such as I have here 
given — they are infinitely varied, and too dreadful to be borne 
even in the recital. With them it is, indeed, a matter of science ; 
and is treated of in a volume to be found in the libraries of this 
country — The Art of Torture — in which the most ingenious 
modes of producing physical agony are detailed with the coolest 
accuracy. I recollect the horror with which a friend of mine 
opened this book, in the library of the Earl of Shrewsbury at 
Alton. 



172 PRIESTCRAFT 

having been saved, but so as by fire. Next come 
the negative and relapsed that are to be burnt, with 
flames [upon their habit, pointing upward ; and next 
come those who profess doctrines contrary to those of 
the church of Rome, and who, besides flames on 
their habit pointing upward, have their picture, 
which is drawn two or three days before, upon their 
breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all with 
open mouths, painted about it. 

" Pegna, a famous Spanish inquisitor, calls this 
procession ' Horrendum ac tremendum spectaculum ;' 
and so it is, in truth, there being something in the 
looks of all the prisoners, besides those that are to be 
burnt, that is ghastly and disconsolate beyond what 
can be imagined ; and in the eyes and countenances 
of those that are to be burnt, there is something that 
looks fierce and eager. 

" The prisoners that are to be burnt alive, besides 
a familiar which all the rest have, have a Jesuit on 
each hand of them, who is continually preaching to 
them to abjure their heresies ; but if they offer to 
speak any thing in defence of the doctrines for which 
they are going to suffer death, they are immediately 
gagged. This I saw done to a prisoner presently 
after he came out of the gates of the inquisition, upon 
his having looked up at the sun, which he had not 
seen for several years, and cried out in a rapture — 
* How is it possible for people that behold that glo- 
rious body, to worship any being but Him that created 
it 1' After the prisoners, comes a troop of familiars 
on horseback, and after them the inquisitors and 
other officers of the court upon mules ; and last of 
all comes the inquisitor-general, upon a white horse 
led by two men, with a black hat and green hat-band, 
and attended by all the nobles that are not employed 
as familiars in the procession. 



IN ALL AGES. 173 

" At the place of execution, which at Lisbon is the 
Ribera, there are so many stakes set up as there are 
prisoners to be burnt, with a good quantity of dry 
furze about them. The stakes of the professed, as 
the inquisitors call them, may be about four yards 
high, and have a small board whereon the prisoner is 
to be seated, within half a yard of the top. The 
negative and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, 
the professed go up a ladder betwixt the two Jesuits, 
who spend about a quarter of an hour in exhorting 
them to be reconciled to the church of Rome ; which, 
if they refuse, the Jesuits descend, the executioner 
ascends and secures them to the stake. The Jesuits 
then go up a second time, and at parting tell them — 
* they leave them to the devil, who stands at their elbow 
to receive their souls, and carry them into the flames 
of hell-fire.' Upon this a great shout is raised, ( Let 
the dogs' beards be made !' which is done by thrusting 
flaming furzes, fastened to long poles, against their 
faces. And this inhumanity is commonly continued 
until their faces are burnt to a coal, and is always 
acompanied by such loud acclamations of joy as are 
not to be heard on any other occasion ; a bull-feast or 
a fair being dull entertainments to this. 

" The professeds' beards having been thus made, or 
trimmed, as they call it in jollity, fire is set to the 
furze which are at the bottom of the stake, and 
above which the professed are chained so high that 
the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the 
seat they sit on ; and if there happen to be a wind, 
to which that place is much exposed, it seldom 
reaches so high as their knees. If it be calm they 
may be dead in half an hour, but if windy they are 
not dead in an hour and a half or two hours, and are 
really roasted, not burnt to death. But though, out 
of hell, there cannot possibly be a more lamentable 



174 PRIESTCRAFT 

spectacle than this, being joined with the sufferers' 
continual cry of, ' Miserecordia por amor de Dios,' 
Mercy for the love of God ! yet it is beheld by people 
of both sexes, and all ages, with such transports of 
joy and satisfaction, as are not witnessed on any 
other occasion. " 

Mr. Wilcox, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, 
wrote to Bishop Burnet, that he witnessed at Lisbon 
in 1706, Hector Dias and Maria Pinteyra burnt 
alive. The woman was alive in the flames half an 
hour ; the man about an hour. The king and his 
brother were seated at a window so near as to be 
addressed for a considerable time in very moving 
terms by the man as he was burning. All he asked 
was a few more fagots, yet he could not obtain them. 
The wind being a little fresh, the man's hinder parts 
were perfectly roasted; and as he turned himself 
round, his ribs opened before he left speaking, the 
fire being recruited as it wasted, to keep him just in 
the same degree of heat ; but all his entreaties could 
not procure him a larger allowance of wood, to 
despatch him more speedily. 

The victims who have suffered death or ruin from 
this diabolical institution in various quarters of the 
world, are estimated at some millions. Llorente 
gives, from actual examination of its own records, 
the following statement of the victims of the Spanish 
Inquisition alone. 

Number of persons who were con- 
demned and perished in the flames 31,912 

Effigies burnt 17,659 

Condemned to severe penances . . 291,450 



341,021 



And these things the choicest agents of the devil, 



IN ALL AGES. 175 

have dared to act in the name of Christ, and men 
have believed them ! Amid all the crimes of Napo- 
leon, let it be for ever remembered that he annihilated 
this earthly hell with a word, — but Englishmen re- 
stored Ferdinand to the throne of Spain, and Ferdi- 
nand restored the inquisition. We fought to give 
Spaniards freedom, and we gave them the most blasting 
despotism which ever walked the earth — the despot- 
ism of priestcraft ; with fire in one hand, and eternal 
darkness and degradation in the other. Cromwell 
had a different spirit — he menaced war on the inqui- 
sition — and the menace was heard to the lowest 
depths of its infernal dens. If the arm of cruelty be 
shortened, it is neither owing to the priests nor their 
creature Ferdinand, but to the light which has entered 
Spain during its political concussions. 

Another subject connected with this history might 
also form a separate chapter — the state of those Eu- 
ropean countries which yet retain popery. It would 
be an interesting inquiry, and would amply bear out 
the character already drawn of priestcraft ; but the 
consideration of our own state-religion draws me on, 
and I must refer my readers to the abundant works 
of our modern travellers for those matters — if indeed 
it be not enough to lift our eyes, and, at a cursory 
view, see the mark of the beast stamped on the bosom 
of every nation where it prevails — in characters of 
slavery, ignorance, calamity, and blood. France, 
roused by the united oppressions of kingcraft and 
priestcraft, rushed into a premature struggle with 
them, in which religion and liberty were both wrecked, 
and such horrors perpetrated as turn the sickening 
eyes of the beholder >away, blinded with burning tears. 
France, thirsting for civil and religious freedom, yet 
unprepared in its popular heart for its secure enjoy- 
ment, arose like a giant in wrath, and smarting with 



176 PRIESTCRAFT 

the accumulated inflictions of popery and civil des- 
potism, crushed together its wrongs and its hopes. 
France, starting from the extreme slumber of papal 
slavery — a state in which its population received pas- 
sively all dogmas and all ordinances, a state without 
inquiry — plunged at once into the opposite extreme 
of restless scrutiny after the true principles of govern- 
ment and religion ; and like a man issuing at full 
speed from darkness to the glare of noonday, has 
seen nothing but indistinct and overpowering images 
of things — felt nothing but the wild frenzy of sud- 
denly-acquired freedom ; and has consequently floun- 
dered on through changes, revolutions, and reeling 
instability, that have been more fatal to the progress 
of true liberty than all the assaults of its determined 
enemies. On the other hand, Spain and Portugal, 
with a certain portion of intelligent and philosophical 
inhabitants, groan under the dead weight of their old 
papal institutions and trains of priests, and wound 
themselves to death in the vain endeavour to throw 
them off, before the people are sufficiently regenerated 
with the inbreakings of knowledge to give vigour to 
the contest. In them we see the full consequences 
of the establishment of inquisitions, by which the 
public mind acquires a habit of fear, and an incapacity 
for daring development of mental energy, even where 
the cause of real fear is no more. Were the people 
of these countries once educated, they would throw 
off monks, priests, and wicked kings,, with the ease 
that Sampson threw off his writhes — but where shall 
this begin, where knowledge has long been treated as 
damnable, and has been punished with death ? Such 
is the state of ignorance, which it is the interest and 
has always been the practice of popery to maintain 
in those countries, that Lord Byron, speaking of the 
ladies, says, they are beautiful, but the countess is 



IN ALL AGES. 177 

no better informed than the commonest peasant girl. 
Italy too lies prostrate beneath the double tyranny 
of the altar and the throne of the foreign barbarian, — 
and the end of those things it is not easy to see. 
Eternal are the thanks, the gratitude, and the honours 
due to Huss, to Jerome of Prague, to Oldcastle, 
to Wycliffe, and other martyrs and reformers, who 
attempted, and to Luther and his contemporaries, who 
finally succeeded in breaking down this mightiest of 
spiritual despotisms, and freeing part of mankind from 
the nightmare of a thousand years ; leaving us in the 
bright day-beams of knowledge and freedom, not to 
suffer, but to sigh over the miseries which the bloodiest 
of priesthoods has inflicted for centuries on the world ; 
— and not to sigh only, but to exert ourselves to 
spread still wider the impulse of good which they 
have given. Who shall tell what effects on the con- 
tinental nations the regeneration of the religious in- 
stitutions of this mighty and illustrious nation shall 
yet produce ? 



178 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 



Where one particular priesthood has rank in the state, others 
are not free ; and where they all have, the people are not free. 
So far as the ceremonies of one particular faith are connected 
with filling any particular occupation, entering into the rela- 
tions, or enjoying any of the advantages of civil life, there is not 
religious liberty. It is a fallacious distinction which has some- 
times been drawn, that a state may patronize, though it should 
not punish. A government cannot patronize one particular 
religion without punishing others. A state has no wealth but 
the people's wealth ; if it pay some, it impoverishes others. A 
state is; no fountain of honour. If it declare one class free, it 
thereby declares others slaves. If it declare some noble, it thereby 
declares others ignoble. Whenever bestowed with partiality, its 
generosity is injustice, and its favour is oppression. 

W. J. Fox's Sermons on the Mission, Character, 
and Doctrine of Christ. 



One would have imagined that when the horrors 
and enormities of that long reign of spiritual slavery 
which I have been detailing — that of the infamous 
papal hierarchy — had roused a great part of Europe to 
scotch the old serpent of Rome ; to burst asunder 
the vile and envenomed folds which she had wrapped 
round the soul, the life, and liberties of man, — that 
the reformed churches would have been careful so to 
organize themselves as to prevent temporal power 



IN ALL AGES. 179 

again enslaving religion. But, in the first place, it is 
no easy matter to escape the grasp of regal and 
political dominion ; and in the next, it is rarely the 
case that men are prepared, after a long sufferance of 
slavery, to enjoy and secure freedom. To expect 
this, is to expect that he whose hody has heen 
cramped by chains, and wasted by vigils in the dark 
dungeons of power for years, should at once, on 
coming out, stretch forth his limbs, acquire in a mo- 
ment the vigour and elasticity of his muscles, and 
bound over the hills with the breathing buoyancy 
of the youthful hunter, to whom every day brings 
exercise, and with exercise, force and adroitness. It 
is to expect that the issuer from the dungeon shall 
bear at once the light of day with an eagle's glance, 
and regard every thing around him with the perspi- 
cuous familiarity of those who have daily walked 
about in the eye of heaven. Besides, in the exult- 
ation of conquest over an old despotism, the populace 
are always, for the moment, too credulously trusting 
to the professions of those who pretend to rejoice with 
them in order to enslave them anew. In a while they 
wake from their dream of good nature, but it is too 
late, — they are again clasped in bonds, and environed 
with bars that nothing but the oppressions of ages 
can corrode, and some far-off out-breaking of popular 
indignation can dash asunder. 

Such has been the fate, more or less, of all the re- 
formed churches of Europe ; but their fortunes we 
cannot follow, we must confine ourselves to the . 
Church of England; — the least reformed, the most 
enslaved of all. The reformation in England was 
commenced and continued, and so far as it went, 
under unfortunate circumstances. It was not the 
result of such a ripened and irrestrainable enthusiasm 
of the popular mind as must have thrown down all 

n 2 



180 PRIESTCRAFT 

before it ; but it was brought about by the arbitrary- 
passions of that monster, Henry VIII. — one of the 
most libidinous and bloody wretches that ever dis- 
graced a throne. At one moment it was his will, 
because it suited his pleasure, to be the advocate of 
the pope ; at another, because it was necessary to the 
gratification of his indomitable desires, — his most 
desperate antagonist. For this he threw off the 
papal yoke — but not to give the church freedom — 
nothing could be farther from his intentions : it was 
only to make it his servant and his slave. He de- 
clared himself the head of the church of Christ in 
these kingdoms. What a head for such a church ! 
The despotism of opinion was only changed in name ; 
and it appears to have been the effect of the merest 
accident that it was changed at all. Everything was 
on the point of being amicably settled between the 
British and the Italian tyrant, when it was rumoured 
at the papal court, that Henry had witnessed a dra- 
matic representation in which that court was ridiculed. 
In a moment of impolitic passion, the " triple tyrant" 
thundered against Henry his bull of denunciation, 
and the breach was made immortal. Heavily and 
long did the pontiff curse the moment in which he 
forgot, in his passion, the priest's proper cunning ; 
but his regret was unavailing — England, was lost 
for ever. 

Edward VI. was a truly pious youth, and was 
unquestionably desirous of doing what was right ; 
but he was a feeble invalid, and was in the hands of 
priests, who did with him as they pleased. By 
authority exercised in his name, a liturgy was 
framed for the church ; which Elizabeth afterwards 
revised by her bishops, and brought to that state in 
which it substantially remains to this day. It was 
not in the nature of that man in petticoats,— that 



IN ALL AGES. 181 

Henry VIII. in a female mask, — to consult the 
inclinations of the people so much as her own high 
will, in which glowed all the dominance and all the 
spirit of the Tudors. Instead of being willing, say 
Heylin and Strype, to strip religion of the ceremo- 
nies which remained in it, she was rather inclined to 
bring the public worship still nearer to the Roman 
ritual ; and had a great propensity to several usages 
in the church of Rome which were justly looked upon 
as superstitious. She thanked publicly one of her 
chaplains who had preached in defence of the real 
presence; she was fond of images, and retained some 
in her chapel ; and would undoubtedly have forbidden 
the marriage of the clergy, if Cecil, her secretary, had 
not interposed. Having appointed a committee of 
divines to revise king Edward's liturgy, she gave 
them an order to strike out all offensive passages 
against the pope, and make people easy about the 
corporal presence of Christ in the sacrament. 

That an imperious woman, who, not finding it 
accordant with the love of undivided power to marry, 
was jealous of all who did ; who even imprisoned her 
relatives and maids of honour who presumed to 
marry, should attempt to prevent the clergy marry- 
ing, was not very wonderful : but she did not stop 
here. Those of her subjects who were desirous of 
a purer, simpler, more apostolic, and less worldly 
system of worship ; who had fled to the continent 
from the fire and chains of her sister Mary, and had 
returned, hoping better things at her hands, she 
ordered to submit to her royal will ; and passed the 
famous act of Uniformity, by which all her subjects 
were commanded to observe the rules her bishops had 
framed, and to take up with such a reformation of the 
church as she had pleased to give them, with herself 
as the visible head of the church upon earth. The 



182 PRIESTCRAFT 

puritans — for so they were called, for desiring a purer 
worship — refused their assent to these proceedings; 
pleaded the dictates of their consciences in behalf of 
their refusal ; and complained heavily, that the gross 
superstitions of popery, which they had looked upon 
as abrogated and abolished, were now revived, and even 
imposed by authority. But they pleaded and com- 
plained in vain. What were their consciences to this 
she tyrant ? the indulgence of whose self-will was of 
more precious value in her eyes than the rights and 
consciences of millions of people. She not only 
commanded and exacted ; but following the example 
of popery, she set up the fire and fagot, and stopped 
all objections with those powerful arguments. It is 
a singular fact, that no state religion, pagan or Chris- 
tian, from the foundation of the world, as this history 
will shew, but is stained with blood. Henry VIII., 
Edward VI., and Elizabeth, all resorted to it, and 
while professing to reform religion, they gave the 
death-blow to liberty of conscience, and reacted all 
the horrors of Roman persecution. Edward, indeed, 
in the tenderness of youth, had a better sense of the 
nature of Christianity, and earnestly and with many 
tears endeavoured to avoid the bloody work of perse- 
cution put upon him by the priests about him, and 
especially by Cranmer, who afterwards received the 
fit retribution of dying in that fire he had so 
zealously kindled for others. 

What could be expected of a church thus born in 
the throes of the most evil passions, cradled in arbi- 
trary power, and baptized in blood ? — Nothing but a 
melancholy death of all those high and glorious hopes 
which the Reformation awoke, and had it been per- 
mitted, unshackled by regal and priestly power, to 
take its course, would naturally have realized. 
Elizabeth proceeded, with that rigorous and strong 



IN ALL AGES. 183 

hand which made her civil government respected, but 
was most unhallowedly and calamitously thrust into 
the sacred tabernacle of conscience, to establish a 
court of high commission to enforce those popish 
rites, doctrines, and ceremonies which she had com- 
pelled the English church to adopt. For the parti- 
culars of the tyrannies exercised by this Inquisition 
over those who asserted the rights of conscience, in 
the face of this strangely reformed church, let the 
reader consult Rapin, Hume, and Neale's History of 
the Puritans. It took its rise from a remarkable 
clause in the Act of Supremacy, by which the queen 
and her successors were empowered to choose per- 
sons " to exercise under her all manner of jurisdic- 
tion, privileges, and pre-eminences, touching any 
spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction in England and 
Ireland ; as also to visit, reform, redress, order, cor- 
rect, and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, 
contempts, offences, and enormities whatever ; pro- 
vided that they have no power to determine anything 
to be heresy but what has been adjudged by the 
authority of the canonical scriptures, or four first 
general councils, or any of them, or shall be so 
declared by parliament with consent of the clergy in 
convocation." These commissioners were empowered 
to make inquiry, not only by legal methods, but also 
by all other means which they could devise, that is 
by rack, torture, inquisition and imprisonment. They 
had authority to examine all persons that they sus- 
pected, or feigned to suspect, by an oath, not allowed 
by their commission, and therefore called ex-officio, 
who were obliged to answer all questions, and thus 
to criminate themselves and friends. The fines they 
imposed were discretionary ; the imprisonment to 
which they doomed was limited by no rule but their 
£wn pleasure ; they imposed as they pleased new 



184 PRIESTCRAFT 

articles of faith on the clergy, and practised all the 
cruelties and iniquities of a real inquisition. 

Thus, indeed, was the inquisition as fully and com- 
pletely set up in England, by a soi-disant reforming 
queen and reformed church, as in Italy, Spain, or 
any of the old priest-ridden countries of popery ; and 
how its powers were exercised may be seen in too 
fearful colours on the broad page of English history ; 
in the more full relations of the non- conformists and 
dissenters. Clergymen who could not thus mould 
their consciences at the will of the state, were ejected 
without mercy from their livings, and they and their 
families exposed to all the horrors of poverty, con- 
tempt, and persecution. So far as the regular clergy, 
however, were concerned, the grievance was not 
great ; for these principally consisted of Catholics, 
who had got in during Mary's reign, and having a 
clear perception that they were well off, and that 
there was little hope of another Romish prince suc- 
ceeding very speedily, they acted according to the 
dictates of the priestly cunning, accommodated their 
consciences to their comfortable condition, and came 
over in a body to the new state of things. The 
bishops, Hume says, having the eye of the world 
more particularly on them, made it a point of honour, 
and having, by a sickly season, been reduced to 
fourteen, all these, except the Bishop of Landaffe, 
refused compliance, and were degraded : but out of 
the 10,000 parishes of England, only eighty vicars 
and rectors, fifty prebendaries, fifteen heads of col- 
leges, twelve archdeacons, and as many deans, sacri- 
ficed their livings to their religious principles ; a fact 
rendered more striking to us by a future one, — that 
of the Presbyterian clergy, who had obtained livings 
during the Commonwealth, and who, on the passing 
of the Act of Uniformity again, on the restoration of 



IX ALL AGES. 185 

Charles II., resigned, to the number of 2000, in one 
day, to the astonishment of even their enemies, who 
had no notion of the existence of such high principle, 
especially as they had not failed to tempt the most 
able of these clergy with offers of deaneries and other 
preferments, and to Baxter, Calamy, and Reynolds 
bishoprics, — the last of whom only was weak enough 
to accept it. It was chiefly, therefore, on the dis- 
senters, and on the more conscientious clergy who 
had been ejected from their livings in Mary's reign, 
that the weight of persecution from the Ecclesiastical 
Court fell. These were harassed with every possible 
vexation. They were fined, imprisoned, and destroyed 
without mercy. This state of things did not cease, ex- 
cepting during the short interval of the Commonwealth, 
till the Act of Toleration, in the reign of William III. 
put an end to it, and gave to conscience some degree 
of liberty. The Stuarts, who succeeded Elizabeth, 
with far less talent than the Tudors, had all their love 
of tyrannical power : and so incorrigible was this 
principle in them, that it soon brought one of them to 
the block ; made his son a fugitive for the greater 
part of his life ; and, finally, notwithstanding the 
good-natured relentings of the people, who had re- 
stored his line to the throne, made them rise once 
more, and drive the hopelessly despotic family from 
the throne for ever. 

But, before we quit Elizabeth, we must give some 
clearer idea of her notion of a reformed church esta- 
blishment. She insisted that the simpler forms and 
doctrines of the church of Geneva should be avoided ; 
and that a splendid hierarchy should be maintained 
of archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, deans, canons, 
and other officials ; declared that the church of Rome 
was a true church, and adopted most of its relics and 



186 PRIESTCRAFT 

ceremonies. Its festivals and holidays in honour of 
saints were to be kept ; the sign of the cross was to 
be used in baptism; kneeling at the sacrament of the 
Lord's supper; bowing at the name of Jesus; giving 
the ring in matrimony ; confirmation of children by 
episcopalian hands ; forbidding marriage at certain 
seasons of the year ; and many other popish append- 
ages were retained. The doctrine of the absolution 
of sins, and the damnatory creed of Athanasius were 
held fast; so that to many — except as to the marriage 
of the clergy, auricular confession, and a less pompous 
and ornate form of worship — little difference between 
popery and the English church could be discerned; 
and, to make the case still more intolerable, matters 
of indifference, such as were neither commanded nor 
forbidden by Scripture — as the external rites of wor- 
ship, the vests of the clergy, religious festivals — were 
put under the authority of the civil magistracy ; and 
those who refused to conform to them were thus made 
rebels to the state, and punishable accordingly. It 
was impossible to conceive a more thorough extinc- 
tion of the rights of the subject in affairs of con- 
science — not in popery itself! The bishops having 
thus got power into their hands, speedily proceeded 
to exercise it, — to shew the old priestly spirit. In 
1588, Bancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, declared 
that the episcopal order were, by express appoint- 
ment of God, superior to the presbyters, and that all 
priests not ordained by bishops were spurious. This, 
says Mosheim, was the form of religion established in 
England, which laid the foundation for perpetual dis- 
sensions and feuds in that otherwise happy and pros- 
perous nation. 

Such was the formation of the church of England ! 
such it remains to the present hour! After such an 



IN ALL AGES. 187 

origin, can any one wonder that it needs reform, 
thorough reform, not merely of its abuses, which are, 
as might naturally be expected from so absurd and 
despotic a constitution, become monstrous, but reform 
and entire remodelling of its canons ? While all 
around it has been progressing in knowledge and 
better understanding of the rights of conscience, and 
the true nature of Christianity, here has this eldest 
daughter of popery been standing still in body, 
covered with all her deformities, with the mark of the 
beast blazing on her forehead, and the filthy rags of 
cast-off popery fluttering about her ; and while every 
clearer eye has been regarding this patchwork progeny 
of priestcraft and barbarism with mingled wonder, 
ridicule, and abhorrence, she has been hugging her- 
self in the fond idea, that she was the queen of 
beauty, and the perfection of holiness ! While the 
civilized world has been moving about her, casting 
off the mind, the manners, and the harsh tenets of 
feudal rudeness, she has lain coiled up in the bright 
face of advancing day, like some huge slimy dragon 
cast up by the sea of ages, in the midst of a stirring and 
refined city ; and has only exhibited signs of life by 
waving her huge scaled tail in menace of her foes, 
and by stretching out her ten-talented paws to devour 
a tenth of the land. Can such a monster longer 
encumber the soil of England ? As soon might we 
expect St. George to come leading his dragon into 
London, or Dunstan present the devil, pincered in 
his fiery tongs, at the door of Lambeth palace. 

Dissent was forced on the nation by the bigotry 
of the rulers and the priests ; it was fanned into 
inextinguishable flame by continual jealousies and 
persecutions under every reign, till that of William 
and Mary ; and in our own time, has, by the luke- 
warmness of the established clergy, led to its extension 



188 PRIESTCRAFT 

tenfold in the new schism of the Methodists.* The 
history of the Society of Friends is full of the most 
singular persecutions on the part of the clergy, and 
the magistracy incited by them. At one time, accord- 
ing to Sewell, their historian, almost every adult of 
this persuasion was in prison. At a very early 
period of their association, two thousand four hundred 
of them were incarcerated. From the time of their 
rise to the very day of the passing of the Act of 
Toleration, they were harassed and abused in all 
possible manners. Their property was seized ; their 
meetings forcibly scattered with rude soldiers and 
the scum of the people; they were confined in the 
most loathsome prisons, where many perished, from 
hardships and severities of winter, and of men more 
wintry than the elements. To escape from this state 
of shameful and intolerable oppression, William Penn, 
one of the greatest and most illustrious men which 
this country ever produced, led out his persecuted 
brethren to America, and there founded one of the 
states of that noble country, which has now risen to 
a pitch of prosperity which is the natural fruit of 

* The sagacious mind of Milton, saw in his day the advantages 
of that system which Wesley in ours has put so successfully into 
operation. f Thus taught, once for all, and thus now and 
then visited and confirmed in the most destitute and poorest 
places of the land, under the government of their own elders, 
performing all ministerial offices amongst them, they may be 
trusted to meet and edify one another, whether in church or 
chapel, or to save them the trudging of many miles thither, 
nearer home, though in a house or barn. For, notwithstanding 
the gaudy superstition of some still ignorantly devoted to tem- 
ples, we may be well assured, that he who did not disdain to be 
laid in a manger, disdains not to be preached in a barn ; and 
that, by such meetings as these, being, indeed, most apostolical 
and primitive, they will, in a short time, advance more in Chris- 
tian knowledge and reformation of life, than by many years 
preaching of such an incumbent, I may say such an incumbrance 
oft-times, as will be merely hired to abide long in such places." 



IN ALL AGES. 189 

liberty ; and stands an every-day opprobrium of priest- 
craft, and a monument not merely of the uselessness, 
but the impolicy and nuisance of establishments. In 
the new, but great cities of that vast empire — in the 
depths of its eternal forests, and on its mountains 
and its plains, that scorn to bear the scorching foot 
of despotism, millions of free men, who have escaped 
from the temporal and spiritual outrages of Europe, 
lift up their voices and their hearts in thanksgivings 
to Him who has given them a land wide as human 
wishes, and as free as the air that envelopes it. They 
have gone out from us to escape our cruelties and 
indignities, and are become our practical teachers in 
the philosophy of religion and government. 

The English church, which has been so lauded by 
its interested supporters, as a model of all that is 
pure, dignified, holy, and compact, has not only thus 
compelled dissent by its tyranny ; but by the consent 
of all historians, has, from its commencement, been 
composed like Nebuchadnezzar's image, of most ill 
agreeing materials, mingled brass and clay ; and has 
consequently been continually rent with differing 
factions. The Tudors established popish rites, and 
Edward IV. introduced Calvinistic doctrines ; and 
these, retained by Elizabeth and James I., Charles I. 
by a singular inconsistency sanctioned, at the same 
moment that, under the management of his domineer- 
ing Archbishop Laud, he was carrying the claims of 
episcopal power to the highest pitch, and would not 
only force them upon the English, but on the Scotch. 
This prelate, as complete a papist in spirit as any 
that ever exercised despotism in the bosom of that 
arbitrary church, has been much eulogised by good 
men of the present day, who, themselves most amiable 
in their own private circles, exhibit in their writings 
too much of the harshness and the bigotry of the 



190 PRIESTCRAFT. 

middle ages to be agreeable in this. The opinion of 
Hume has been often quoted in his favour ; let us 
therefore see what Hume does say of him. " This 
man was virtuous, if severity of manners alone, and 
abstinence of pleasure, could deserve that name. He 
was learned, if polemical knowledge could entitle 
him to that praise. He was disinterested; but with 
unceasing industry he studied to exalt the priestly 
and prelatical character, which was his own. His 
zeal was unrelenting in the cause of religion ; that is, 
by imposing, by rigorous measures, his own tenets 
and pious ceremonies on the obstinate puritans, 
who had profanely dared to oppose him. In prose- 
cution of his holy purposes, he overlooked every 
human consideration ; or, in other words, the heat 
and indiscretion of his temper made him neglect the 
views of prudence, and rules of good manners. He 
was in this respect happy, (how exactly the charac- 
ter of some eminent men of this day!) — that all his 
enemies were also imagined by him the declared 
enemies of loyalty and true piety; and that every 
exercise of his anger, by that means, became in 
his eyes, a merit and a virtue. This was the man 
who acquired so great an ascendant over Charles, and 
who led him by the facility of his temper, with a 
conduct which proved so fatal to himself and to his 
kingdom." He adds, that, " in return for Charles's 
indulgence towards the church, Laud, and his fol- 
lowers took care to magnify, on every occasion, the 
regal authority, and to treat with the utmost disdain 
or detestation, all puritanical pretensions to a free 
and independent constitution." At the same time, 
he continues, that " while these prelates exalted the 
kingly power, they took care to set the priestly still 
higher, and endeavoured to render it independent of 
the sovereign. They declared it sacred and inde- 



IN ALL AGES. 191 

feasible ; all right to private judgment in spiritual 
matters was denied to laymen ; bishops held spiritual 
courts without any notice taken of the king's au- 
thority ; and in short, rapid strides were made, not only 
towards the haughty despotism of popery, but towards 
its superstitious acrimoniousness. Laud, in spite 
of public opinion and private remonstrance, intro- 
duced pictures into the churches, shifted the altar 
back to its old papal standing, set up again the cru- 
cifix, and advised that the discipline and worship of 
the church should be imposed in all the colonies, and 
in all the regiments and trading companies abroad, 
and that no intimacy should be maintained with the 
reformed churches of the continent. All his mea- 
sures, in fact, tended to a most popish state of cere- 
monies in worship, and tyranny and intolerance in 
behaviour; and if any one, after reading the following 
account of his consecration of St. Catherine's church, 
given by the same historian on the authority of 
Wellwood, Rushworth, and Franklin, can see any 
difference between him and a most thorough-going 
papist, he has better eyes than I. 

" 6 On the bishop's approach to the west door of the 
church, a loud voice cried, ' Open, open, ye ever- 
lasting doors, that the king of glory may enter in.' 
Immediately the doors of the church flew open, and 
the bishop entered. Falling on his knees, with eyes 
elevated, and arms expanded, he uttered these words : 
1 This place is holy ; the ground is holy ; in the 
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, 
I pronounce it holy. 

" ' Going towards the chancel, he several times took 
up from the floor some of the dust, and threw it in 
the air. When he approached, with his attendants, 
near to the communion table, he bowed frequently 
towards it ; and on their return, they went round the 



192 PRIESTCRAFT 

church, repeating as they marched along, some of the 
Psalms, and said a form of prayer, which concluded 
in these words — * We consecrate this church, and 
separate it unto Thee, as holy ground, not to be pro- 
faned any more to common uses.' 

" ' After this, the bishop standing near the commu- 
nion table, solemnly pronounced many imprecations 
upon such as should afterwards pollute that holy 
place by musters of soldiers, or keeping in it profane 
law courts, or carrying burdens through it. On the 
conclusion of every curse, he bowed towards the east, 
and said — * Let all the people say, Amen.' 

" ' The imprecations being also piously finished, 
there were poured out a number of blessings on all 
such as had any hand in building and forming that 
sacred and beautiful edifice ; and on such as had 
given, or should hereafter give to it, any chalices, 
plate, ornaments, or utensils. At every benediction 
he in like manner bowed towards the east, and cried — 
* Let all the people say, Amen.' 

" ' The sermon followed: after which the bishop 
consecrated and administered the sacrament in the 
following manner. As he approached the communion 
table he made many lowly reverences ; and, coming 
up to that part of the table where the bread and wine 
lay, he bowed seven times. After the reading of 
many prayers, he approached the sacramental ele- 
ments, and gently lifted up the napkin in which the 
bread was placed. When he beheld the bread, he 
suddenly let fall the napkin, flew back a step or two, 
bowed three several times towards the bread, then he 
drew nigh again, opened the napkin, and bowed as 
before. 

" ' Next he laid his hand on the cup, which had a 
cover upon it, and was filled with wine. He let go 
the cup, fell back, and bowed thrice towards it. He 



IN ALL AGES. 193 

approached again, and lifting up the cover, peeped 
in. Seeing the wine, he let fall the cover, started 
back, and bowed as before. Then he received the 
sacrament, and gave it to others ; and, many prayers 
being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended. 
The walls and floor and roof of the fabric were then 
supposed to be sufficiently holy." 

The consequence of these ridiculous ceremonies 
on the one hand, and severities on the other, — for 
the English Inquisition, in the form of the High 
Commission Court, and the Star Chamber, was in 
full exercise, and many cruelties and iniquities were 
continually practised in them on those who dared to 
have an opinion of their own, — was, that Laud was 
brought to the block,* and his sovereign was left 
in that calamitous course of unsuccessful despotism 
which actually brought him there, and deluged the 
whole nation in blood, and tossed it in years of anar- 
chy and crime. By these circumstances, however, 
the church received, what Lord Chatham so expressly 
designated in Parliament — a Popish Liturgy — a Cal- 
vinistic Creed, and an Armenian Clergy. 

The heterogeneous materials of the church shewed 
conspicuously in the famous assembly of divines at 
Westminster during part of Charles's reign and part 

* It is pity that an archbishop like Land should be brought 
to such an end ; because there are so much cheaper ways, and 
more economical of human suffering than the real murder of 
political enemies in the manner of Vane and Ney. But con- 
siderations of this kind should hinder no man from discerning, 
how entirely all that constitutes public and private freedom, 
happiness, and honour, has been obtained by the conquest and 
beating down, and is, in fact, the spoil of war carried off by the 
subjection and trampling under foot of that political and eccle- 
siastical party who have just received another mighty bruise ; 
and of whom it has been truly said, that but for their successive 
defeats, England would at this moment have been Spain, Por- 
tugal, or Turkey. — Westminster Review, No, XXXIV, 

o 



194 PRIESTCRAFT 

of the Commonwealth, in which the Geneva form of 
worship was admitted by some of the most celebrated 
bishops, amongst them Tillotson and Selden. By 
the accession of William another rent was made : part 
of the hierarchy adhering to the Stuart line, refusing 
to swear allegiance to the new dynasty, and thus 
acquiring the name of Non-jurors, — splitting the 
church into High-church and Low- church, — two par- 
ties whose feuds and heart-burnings continued till 
late years, when the sect of the Evangelicals has 
appeared, to bear prolonged evidence to the inter- 
nal destitution of the principles of cohesion in the 
Establishment. These lean towards the Calvinistic 
creed, which they justly assert is the strict, literal creed 
of the church according to the Thirty-nine Articles ; 
and advocate a reform in the manners, and a renewed 
zeal in the spirit of the clergy. When we add to this 
that whereas in other countries the church is under 
the government of one deliberative body, and is in 
this split into two houses of convocation, we have 
before us a picture of unconnectedness that is per- 
fectly amazing. 

This is but a melancholy sketch of the history of 
this celebrated church ; but it is one so broadly, 
copiously, and overwhelmingly delineated in the 
annals of the nation at large, that it cannot be con- 
troverted ; — a history, as that of every state religion 
must be, of power usurping the throne of conscience ; 
thrusting the spirit of the people from free address to, 
and communion with their God; and in refusal of 
obedience — an obedience more deadly and shameful 
than the most outrageous resistance could possibly 
be — following them with the fire and sword of exter- 
mination ; or if that were not allowed, with the sneers 
and taunts of contempt. Alas ! that such should be 
the miserable results of that reformation which at 



IN ALL AGES. 195 

first promised such glorious fruits ; that the blood of 
martyrs, and the fervid prayers and mighty exertions 
of the noblest intellects, and holiest men, should be 
spent so much in vain. 

But such ever has been, and ever will be the re- 
sult of that great fundamental error, of linking in 
unnatural union church and state ; of making the 
church of Christ, who has himself declared that " his 
kingdom is not of this world," a tool of ambitious 
kings and rulers. 

The nature of the Christian religion is essentially 
free ; the voice of Christ proclaims to men — " the 
truth shall make you free!" The spirit of Chris- 
tianity is so delicate in its sensibility, that it shrinks 
from the touch of the iron and blood-stained hand of 
political rule ; it is so boundless in its aspirations, 
and expansive in its energies, that it must stand on 
the broad champaign of civil and intellectual liberty, 
ere it can stretch its wings effectively for that flight 
which is destined to encompass the earth, and end 
only in eternity. And what has been the conse- 
quence of attempting to chain this free spirit to the 
ear of state ? Why, that in its days of earlier union, 
arbitrary power sought to quench in its own sacred 
name, its own very life ! — pursued with fire, sword, 
fetters, dungeons, and death, its primest advocates. 
The history of dissent is full of these horrors : and 
Ireland, in which the same system was pursued ; and 
Scotland, that sooner than submit to it, rose, and 
stood to the death in many a mountain pass and 
bloody valley, can testify to the same odious policy. 
The oppressions and splendid resistance of the Scot- 
tish Covenanters, — the bloody havoc made amongst 
them by the soldiery of reformed kings and a re- 
formed church ; and their undaunted and most pic- 
turesque celebration of their own simple worship, 

o 2 



196 PRIESTCRAFT 

lifting up their voices amid the rocks and desarts 
whither they were driven for their adherence to their 
religion, are well told by their own historians, but 
have been made of immortal interest by Sir Walter 
Scott. From the first to the last — from the accession of 
James I. to the throne of England, to the expulsion 
of James II. from that throne, a period of upwards 
of eighty years, the Stuarts persisted in the most 
tyrannical endeavours to force on their native coun- 
try of Scotland the episcopal church ; and, in con- 
sequence, deluged that high-spirited and beautiful 
country with blood. Many a solitary heath, many a 
scene of savage rocks in that land, where the peasant 
now passes by and only wonders at its wild silence, are 
yet loud in the ear of heaven in eternal complaints 
of the bloody and domineering deeds of the English 
church, wrought by its advice and by the hireling 
murderers of its royal head ; many a name — as Kil- 
sythe, Killicranky, and Bothwell Bridge — will rise 
up for ever in the souls of man against her. Does 
she stand before us and call herself holy and meek, 
and beneficent, with all these crimes, all these lives, 
all this blood and misery on her head ? Well would 
it have been for Ireland, well for England, well for 
the Episcopalian Church itself, if some Jenny Geddes 
had been found, as in Edinburgh, to launch her 
three-legged stool at the head of the clergyman when 
he began to deal out a state liturgy ; and had been 
followed by the simultaneous efforts of the whole 
people, to teach kings and priests to respect the in- 
alienable rights of conscience : but in default of this, 
what has been the consequence ? While power was 
left to the church, it persecuted, and would have 
continued to persecute. The act of William III. put 
an end to this ; and we must henceforth look for the 
spirit of priestcraft in a different shape. The whole 



IN ALL AGES. 197 

course of this volume has shewn that this wily spirit 
has conformed itself to circumstances. Where un- 
limited power was within its grasp, it seized it with- 
out hesitation, and exercised it without mercy. Egypt, 
India, all ancient Asia, and all feudal Europe, are 
witnesses of this. Where it could not act so freely, 
it submitted to the spirit of the people ; and worked 
more quietly, more unseen, but equally effectually as 
in Greece and Pagan Rome. England, after Wil- 
liam III., afforded no further scope for imprisonment, 
the martyr's flaming pile, or the bloody axe of the 
public executioner. It was rapidly careering in a 
course of knowledge and civilization, which made 
men acquainted with their rights, and has eventually 
lifted this nation to the proudest position ever occu- 
pied by any people in the whole history of the world. 
The established clergy, therefore, had nothing to do 
but to secure the full enjoyment of their revenues, 
and that parochial influence with which they were 
invested ; and the consequence is that, in the noblest 
nation of the earth, they have become the richest 
body of priests and the most apathetic towards the 
people, from whom their wealth is drawn. The 
clergy, from these circumstances, have been long gra- 
dually diverging into two classes, — -one, sunk into 
the slumberous bed of enormous wealth and gross 
luxury; the other, into the miserable slough of in- 
terminable toil and poverty. If we look at the dig- 
nitaries of the church, and at the description of the 
dignitaries of the papal church in its later days of 
universal influence, can we avoid being struck with 
the coincidence of character? " They pass their 
days amidst the pleasures and cabals of courts ; and 
appear rather the slaves of princes, than the servants 
of Him whose kingdom is not of this world. They 
court glory : they aspire after riches ; while very 



198 PRIESTCRAFT 

few employ their time and labour in edifying the 
people, or in promoting among them the vital spirit 
of religion; and, what is more deplorable, those 
bishops who, sensible of the sanctity of their charac- 
ter, and the duties of their office, distinguish them- 
selves by zeal in the cause of virtue, are frequently 
exposed to the malicious efforts of envy, often loaded 
with false accusations, and involved in perplexities 
of various kinds." 

But it is not the bishops alone to whom this ap- 
plies. These are the features of the establishment, 
at least, as they appear in the eyes of the people at 
large ;— 

A clergy, in part, overpaid, and inactive ; in part, 
overworked, and ill paid. 

Loaded, in part, with opulent sinecures and shame- 
ful pluralities ; the greater part doing the duty of 
the lazy and the absent — on a paltry pittance. 

Lukewarm in their duties ; and proudly cold in 
their intercourse with the poor of their flocks. 

A clergy, doggedly adhesive to the establishment 
as it is, in spite of the progress of the public mind; 
adhering to its most absurd, and most impolitic in- 
stitutions, rites, and dogmas. 



IN ALL AGES. 199 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 



Thrice happy days ! thrice blest the man who saw 
Their dawn ! The Church and State, that long had held 
Unholy intercourse, were now divorced ! 

Pollok's Course of Time, 2?. 4. 

Forced consecrations out of another man's estate are no better 
than forced vows, hateful to God, " who loves a cheerful giver ;" 
but much more hateful wrung out of men's purses to maintain a 
disapproved ministry against their consciences. 

Milton on Hirelings.* 



So intolerable has the state of the church, described 
in the conclusion of the last chapter, become, that 
the public is, at this moment, loud in demanding its 
reform; and the clergy themselves, sensible that 
reform is inevitable, with a wise policy, bend in some 
degree to the popular opinion. Already the minis- 
ters of a reformed government have published their 
plan of reform for the church of Ireland, that mon- 
strous excrescence, where a revenue of 800,000?. 
according to the last clerical returns to Parliament, 
but according to other calculations, little short 
of 2,000,000?. is appropriated to a population of 
500,000 protestants; while 8,000,000 of catholics 
not only help to support their establishment, but their 

* A spirited publisher, who should at this crisis reprint this 
most excellent pamphlet, would do a service to the public, and 
most likely to himself. 



200 PRIESTCRAFT 

own priests. The proposed reform consists prin- 
cipally in reducing the archbishoprics and bishoprics 
from twenty-two to twelve ; in reducing the incomes of 
the remaining ones ; in laying on a tax of fifteen per 
cent, on the general income of the clergy; in taking 
off the church cess, or rate, from the people ; and in 
selling off the lands of the extinguished bishoprics as 
they fall out of lease. The Irish members of parlia- 
ment have received this announcement with ecstasies 
of delight. It is part of the Irish character to fly into 
sudden raptures ; but cool reflection will come yet ; 
and then — what will satisfy them? Why, nothing 
short of the utter abrogation of protestant episcopacy 
as a state religion. If it were necessary that a reli- 
gion should be established, as it is called, it ought 
here to be the catholic. The opinions of the majority 
of a nation ought surely to command some respect ; 
ought surely to be the guide in such matters. If a 
nation is to patronize and support one religion in pre- 
ference to another, it ought surely to be the religion of 
the nation. The religion of Ireland is catholic, — the 
religion of Scotland is presbyterian, — why should 
Scotland be permitted to have a church of her own, 
and Ireland be refused one ? Why should the majo- 
rity in the other parts of the empire decide the 
establishment of their party, and in Ireland an 
insignificant sect be thrust upon the people as the 
national religion; and be bolstered up with tithes, 
glebes, and wealth enormous ? These are plain 
questions, and suggest a plain answer. 

One circumstance connected with Irish church 
reform is characteristic of its real nature and extent, 
as proposed by the present ministers, and ought to 
have opened the eyes of all men. The bishopric of 
Derry, the most enormously endowed in Ireland, was 
vacant at the very moment of the organization of this 



IN ALL AGES. 201 

plan of reform. If a number of bishoprics were to be 
reduced, why should not this have been one ? Or if 
it were not thought desirable to extinguish it, why 
should not the incumbent of one of those sees which 
were to be withdrawn, be translated to this, and thus 
one at least have been instantly removed? The 
surprise which the appointment of a bishop to this 
see, under these circumstances created, was at once 
dissipated; and gave place, in the public mind, to 
a higher surprise and a feeling of indignation, by 
the discovery that the bishop thus installed, was Dr. 
Poynton, the brother-in-law of Earl Grey! This 
was an assurance sufficiently intelligible. Will a man 
set himself heartily to cut down a tree in whose 
topmost branches he has placed his brother ? Will a 
man assay to sink a vessel in which he has embarked 
his own family ? Will a general proceed cordially to 
blow up a fortress in which his near relative is 
commandant? Then, will Earl Grey set himself 
heartily to work, to reform efficiently the Irish 
church ! 

The abolition of this bishopric would have been a 
thing of the highest importance. Its revenue, accord- 
ing to the present return, is 13,000/. ; and it is 
proposed to reduce it to 8,000/. But what is the 
estimate of Mr. Wakefield of the value of this see ? — 
a most competent authority. He calculates that the 
whole of its property, over and above the tenth part 
of the gross produce of the land, cannot be much 
short of 3,000,000/. ; and that the bishop's land, at a 
fair rate of rent, would produce an income of 130,000/. 
a year. This, then, is the birth into which Earl 
Grey, in the face of a reformed parliament — of his own 
professions of real reform — of suffering England, and 
starving Ireland, has comfortably put his brother-in- 
law, and proposes to satisfy the country by the 



202 PRIESTCRAFT 

abatement of 5,000/. a year out of this immense 
property. By the extinction of this bishopric alone, 
a saving to the country would have been made at 
once of 3,000,000/. ! — for the question in this case is, 
not what the bishop actually derives from the land, 
but what it is worth to the nation. 

But the whole of this extraordinary establishment 
of state religion is of a piece. For the government of 
the whole church of England, twenty-six Archbishops 
and Bishops exist — for 500,000 Irish protestants 
there are twenty-two ! According to former returns, 
there are 1,238 parochial benefices ; according to the 
present, 1,401, in which are 860 resident clergymen. 
To provide for these archbishops and bishops, who 
superintend about as many people as one bishop in 
England would very well manage, it is calculated 
that out of 14,603,473 statute acres under cultiva- 
tion, 13,603,473 are tithed. The glebe of the paro- 
chial clergy varies from 300 to 40*000 acres. The 
glebe in the diocese of Derry alone, amounts to more 
than 17,000 acres. The glebes, indeed, it is cal- 
culated in Derry and Kilmore would, if equally 
divided, give twenty acres to every parish in Ireland. 
Mr. Wakefield estimates that the property of six of 
the bishops, when out of lease, would produce 
580,000/. a year;— a sum which would give an 
income of 500/. a year for each of the clergy, and 
a fund for the establishment of a school in every 
parish in Ireland. But if the property of six bishops 
amount to 580,000/. a year, what becomes of the 
clerical calculation which makes the whole income of 
the Irish church but 800,000/. ?— leaving to the whole 
body of parochial clergy and sixteen bishops little 
more than 200,000/. ? 

The following is an extract from the returns to the 
House of Commons in February, 1824. 



IN ALL AGES. 203 

Sees. Acres. Sees. Acres. 

Deny - - - 94,836 Tuam - - - 49,281 

Armagh - - 63,470 Elphin - - - 31,017 

Kilmore - - 51,350 Clogher - - 32,817 

Dublin - - - 28,784 Cork and Ross 22,755 

Meath - - - 18,374 Cashel - - - 12,800 

Gssory - - 13,391 Killaloe - - 11,081 

Total, 439,953 acres ; which at 205. per acre, give 
a rental of 439,953Z. 

If we estimate the remaining ten bishoprics at one- 
third of the amount, there is 146,651, — a rental of 
diocesan lands of 586,604/. 

If we estimate the glebes at 100,000 acres, which 
is, probably, far too little, when the glebe of Derry 
alone exceeds 17,000 acres, and the parochial glebes 
vary from 300 to 40,000 acres, at 205., here is 
100,000?. 

The tithe of upwards of 13,000,000 acres, at only 
25., a tithe of the rental, not of the gross produce, 
would be 1,300,000?. — making a total of income for 
the Irish church, of 1,986,604?. 

As women's fortunes are said to be paid in sixpences, 
so when the incomes of the clergy are returned to 
government, they seem to be calculated in farthings, 
or something less. Tithe and glebe seem suddenly 
to lose their natural value, surplice fees and fines 
shrink into insignificance. Yet these fines are pretty 
things, though they do not always amount to so much 
as the present Bishop of Durham is stated, on the 
authority of Mr. Beverly, to have received of Mrs. 
Beaumont, for the renewal of the lease of her lead 
mines— 72,000?. ! 

Now admitting, that owing to the low rate of 
clerical leases, to waste land, to lay impropriation, 
and to the popular inability or repugnance to pay 



204 PRIESTCRAFT 

tithes, the income of the church falls far below this 
estimate, the question, so far as the country is con- 
cerned, is the same. Here is a monstrous amount 
of property appropriated to a certain purpose, and 
what good is done ? What good, indeed, as it regards 
Ireland? — A prodigious waste of property (for in 
addition to all the rest, it appears that, at different 
times since the Union, about half a million has been 
voted to augment poor livings) only to render the 
name of protestant hateful to that nation, by the 
laziness, non-residence, and tithe-exactions of the 
clergy of a church, which the Edinburgh Review, 
some years ago, happily compared to an Irish regiment 
of volunteers, which consisted of sixteen lieutenant- 
colonels, two drummers, and one private ! The same 
able journal has well remarked, that " whatever may 
be the supposed effects of a richly endowed church 
in maintaining a particular creed, it is evidently not 
the machine for the conversion of a people.'' 

The justice and intelligence of the British people 
cannot long, therefore, be satisfied with lopping off a 
few enormities from such a system ; they will demand 
its total extinction. Religion, and the best objects of 
all human government, demand it ! For, if pro- 
testantism is to prosper in Ireland, it must not come 
before the people in the shape of a corporation, char- 
tered in opposition to the predominant feelings of the 
country, and endowed with a vast portion of the 
people's wealth; it must not come in the shape of 
two and twenty archbishops and bishops to super- 
intend some few hundred clergymen, on incomes of 
10,000£. a year; in the shape of tithe-fed clergymen 
without parishes, parishes without churches, and 
churches without people ; in the shape of men who 
profess to be teachers of Christian meekness and love, 
but are seen only as zealous collectors of tithes ; in 



IN ALL AGES. 205 

the shape of tithe-proctors, with troops of soldiery at 
their heels; in the shape of noon-day exaction and 
midnight retaliation and revenge ; in short, of wealth 
and violence on the one hand, and destitution and 
despair on the other; — but if it come really to 
prosper and to bless, it must come as Christ himself 
came, — as a free personification of disinterested kind- 
ness ; zealous love for the souls of men, rather than 
their purses ; active endeavour to soothe the irritation 
and enlighten the minds of the poor; it must be 
offered to men's hearts, but not thrust upon their 
shoulders; it must stand before the public eye as a 
thing to be chosen, or refused ; as a thing which* 
invites observation, and can bear it ; as a thing which 
obviously has no interest but what is blended with 
the whole happiness of man ; — whose nobility is so 
striking, and its beauty so attractive, that hearts are 
drawn to its embraces, not crushed beneath its tread. 
The system of compulsion and lavish endowment has 
been tried long enough ; long enough has state reli- 
gion, to use Burke's sophistical metaphor, " reared 
its mitred front in courts and parliaments," its effects 
are before the public in characters of fire and blood ! 
Instead of peace, we have horrible anarchy — instead 
of the milk of human kindness, deadly exasperation 
and relentless murder — in God's name let us see 
what the system of the apostles will now do ! — a free 
offer, — an open hand, — and a zealous heart! — a 
system less of the bag and scrip, than of virtues and 
arguments that address themselves to the wants, the 
understanding, and the generosity of a generous 
nation. 

To come now to England. The dissenters, now a 
great and important body of people — a people alive to 
their civil and religious rights, must be relieved from 
church-rates. Ministers have acknowledged the justice 



206 PRIESTCRAFT 

of this demand, by already proposing to abolish them 
in Ireland — the principle in both cases is the same. 
The Irish cess, it appears, produces only about 94,000/. 
What the dissenters pay in the shape of church-rates, 
Easter offerings, etc., I do not know — the sum must 
be enormous; but I do know that the Society of 
Friends, a comparatively small body, suffers the 
violence and vexation of distraint of their goods, for 
such things, to the amount of about 14,000Z. a- 
year; and these people maintain their own religion, 
and their own poor. 

That English dissenters should be compelled to 
contribute to the support of an established church, is 
a moral and political absurdity. By the Act of 
Toleration of King William, the rights of conscience 
are recognised : but by this compulsion all the rights 
of conscience are violated. In the words of the able 
writer from whom I have taken the motto at the 
head of the last chapter — " A government cannot 
patronize one particular religion without punishing 
others. A state has no wealth but the people's 
wealth. If it pay some, it impoverishes others. " To 
tell us that we may all enjoy our own opinions, 
and celebrate our own worship in perfect freedom ; 
and yet to compel us to support another mode of 
religion, and another set of opinions, in our eyes 
erroneous and unchristian, is at once an oppres- 
sion and a bitter mockery. It is not so much the 
sum of actual money that we pay which constitutes 
the grievance, — that might be borne ; but the grava- 
men lies here, — that by supporting an establishment, 
we support what, in the abstract, both religiously 
and politically, we believe ought not to exist. We 
believe it is the duty of a government, and espe- 
cially of a Christian government, which acknow- 
ledges the sacred rites of conscience, to protect every 



IN ALL AGES. 207 

modification of the Christian religion; but not to 
support one in preference to, and at the expense of 
the rest. This is not to patronize religion, but a 
party. That an establishment, unjust and impolitic 
in itself, never can, and never has, promoted true 
religion, is shewn abundantly by this volume ; it is 
testified equally by the apathy of the established 
church, and the activity of the dissenters. Is it not 
a source of continual complaints and bitterness 
amongst clerical writers, that the dissenters are for 
ever intruding themselves into their parishes ; and, 
with what they are pleased to term their fiery fanati- 
cism, continually turn the heads of their parishioners, 
and seduce them to the conventicle ? Now whether 
this zeal be healthful or not, whether it be pure or 
alloyed, refined or coarse, rational or fanatic, it mat- 
ters not to our present question, — it is zeal, — and 
the vital question is, whence does it arise ? how is it 
maintained ? Not, certainly, from a state establish- 
ment ! — not by charters and endowments. It springs 
from the soul of the people, and asks no breath of 
life but their approbation. Here, then, is an acknow- 
ledged principle of religious propagation, more effica- 
cious than all the boasted influence of canonicals and 
mitres ; of cathedral piles and sounding orchestras ; of 
all the political machinery of tithes, and glebes, and 
church-rates, and forced payments, called by the 
sarcastic name of gifts and offerings, as if the imposi- 
tion were not enough, but we must suffer the mockery 
of being placed in the light of free donors and bowing 
offerers of gifts at a shrine that we inwardly abhor. 
Here is a confessed power to keep alive the popular 
zeal for religion ; — if that zeal wants better guidance, 
it becomes every good man to lend his hand to its 
due direction, — but the principle itself is indisputably 
manifested, and sets the seal for ever to the non- 



208 PRIESTCRAFT 

necessity, and therefore to the political oppression, of 
a state religion. Nothing could justify a state reli- 
gious establishment but the total and proven impos- 
sibility of keeping alive Christianity without it ; but 
here it is seen that religious zeal rather takes any 
other form than that stamped upon it by legal enact- 
ments. Like the acanthus, pressed under the tile, it 
rises up with unquenchable vitality all around, and 
not only buries the dead tile of policy under its 
vigorous vegetation, but gives origin to new orders 
of Christian architecture. While the zeal of the 
established clerical order languishes under the weight 
of good things which its friends have cast upon it; 
while bishoprics, and deaneries, and prebends cannot 
stimulate it to the vital point of proselytism; while 
tithes, and glebes, and fines, and parochial fees can- 
not enliven it, the free breath of popular societies 
can blow it into a flame that spreads far and wide, 
and even scorches the canonical skirts of the state 
clergy. Who, after this, ^hall dare to repeat the 
stale sophism that Christianity needs the arm of 
human legislation to support her, — that she must be 
perched on cathedral pinnacles to be fairly seen ; that 
she must be wrapped in alb or surplice, and crowned 
with shovel-hat or mitre to be reverenced, and seated 
on the episcopal throne to be adored? Who shall 
dare to turn his eye on the United States of America, 
where there is no state religion, yet where Christianity 
flourishes not less than amongst us, and then attempt 
to palm upon us the canting and selfish falsehood, 
that religion is bound up in the bundle of life with an 
Act of Parliament ? 

By compelling us to support an established reli- 
gion, we are compelled to support and propagate all 
its errors, its injustice, and its absurdities, however 
great, and numerous, and pernicious they may be. 



IN ALL AGES. 209 

Every sect in England at present, in contributing to 
the establishment, contributes to that which it abhors. 
The denouncer of episcopacy is made to maintain a 
whole hierarchy of bishops ; the Catholic, what he 
declares to be pestilent heresies of the most damnable 
sort ; the Calvinist maintains Arminianism ; the Ar- 
minian, Calvinism ; for, in the church are combined 
" a Calvinistic creed, and an Arminian clergy." The 
Friend, who believes all hierarchies antichristian, 
who holds that all ministers should speak from the 
immediate influence of the Holy Spirit, and abomi- 
nates hireling ministers, written sermons, a cut-and- 
dried liturgy, and half the doctrines of the church to 
boot, is forced, by distraint of his goods, to feed and 
uphold all these enormities : every man is made to 
maintain the doctrine of priestly absolution, for the 
church maintains it ; and every man is made most 
heartily to damn himself, for the Athanasian creed, 
which is one of the creeds of the church, does declare 
every man to be damned who doubts it. 

Such a preposterous abuse of power never can be 
much longer tolerated in this country. The church- 
rates must be abolished, and with them tithes. The 
removal of this last burden is now so universally 
deemed necessary, that I shall not say many words 
upon it. Tithes are politically condemned, and will 
disappear for ever. A more ingenious method could 
not have been devised for the support of a minister of 
religion, had it been the object of the deviser to place 
an eternal object of hatred, heart-burning, and dispute 
between him and his flock ; to place him in the position 
of a harpy over the table of every one of his hearers ; 
and to thus render abortive all his religious endea- 
vours. A more iniquitous one never was conceived, — 
for it taxes not simply a man's land, but his capital, 
his genius, his skill, and industry ; so that the priest 

p 



210 PRIESTCRAFT 

reaps not merely a tithe of the fruits of the earth, but 
of the fruits of every man's heart and mind who ven- 
tures to till the earth. But they are condemned : and 
let them go, with this one observation of Milton's — 
" As well under the Gospel as under the law — say 
our English divines, and they only of all Protestants 
— is Tithes. That the law of tithes is in force under 
the Gospel, all other Protestant divines, though 
equally concerned, yet constantly deny. When any 
one of our's has attempted, in Latin, to maintain 
this argument, — though a man would think they 
might suffer him, without opposition, in a point 
equally tending to the advantage of all ministers — yet 
they cease not to oppose him, as in a doctrine not fit 
to pass unopposed under the gospel; which shews 
the modesty, the contentedness of those foreign 
pastors with the maintainance given them; their 
sincerity also in truth, though less gainful, and the 
avarice of ours, who, through the love of their old 
papistical tithes, consider not the weak arguments, or 
rather conjectures and surmises which they bring to 
defend them." What a striking fact is this! and 
what a singular feature it presents of the English 
church — the only one that has advocated and suffered 
itself to be fed by this iniquitous system of tithes ! If 
we add to this the following paragraph, which ap- 
peared in the Essex Independent, and the principle of 
which, whatever the calculations may be, is notoriously 
correct, what an image of clerical rapacity and want 
of conscience we have before us ! " The church ought 
to relinquish the property of the poor. The original 
tripartite division of tithes is acknowledged— one- 
third portion of the revenue of the church being the 
undoubted property of the poor. The entire pos- 
sessions of the church, in tithe and landed property, 
amount in value to the sum of 1 70,450, 000Z. ; and the 



IN ALL AGES, 211 

extensive leaseholds lately reverted to the bishopric 
of London, raise the amount to 180,000,000/. One- 
third of this, 60,000,000/., is therefore the sum which 
the state is most equitably entitled to demand from 
the church." After reading this, who can prevent 
himself recalling the words of Christ — " The poor ye 
have always with you, but me ye have not always!''' 

In the next place, the church must be divorced 
from the state. This unnatural union, the device of 
artful politicians, is an injustice to the subject, and 
an indignity to the church itself. The natural effect 
upon a church in becoming a state religion is, that its 
freedom is instantly extinguished ; every principle of 
progression and improvement is annihilated ; and the 
generous spirit which would lead it to expand, and 
spread itself abroad on the kindred spirits of men, is 
frozen by the cold breath of worldly policy. Like 
metal molten in the furnace, it flows into the state as 
into a mould, receives its shape and stamp, and sets 
for ever. It may be dashed to pieces by the appli- 
cation of external force ; but, last as long as it may, 
it will never be moved, remodelled, or purified from 
within. It becomes stationary for ever. However 
all around may be quickened with the moving spirit 
of knowledge, and excited to activity and fruitful- 
ness, it stands silent and barren, — like a tree covered 
with the knots and burs of antiquated absurdities ; its 
head, a chaos of rotten boughs amid the green vigour 
of the forest; and while it is insensibly falling to 
decay, it bears itself with a sturdy and sullen pride, 
and wears a ludicrous air of superiority in the very 
moment of its fall. That such is the situation of the 
establishment, who can deny? — Who that calls to 
mind its doctrine of absolution of sins ; its Athanasian 
creed, — a thing so monstrous as to horrify and make 
ashamed the best minds of its own sons, and which 

p 2 



212 PRIESTCRAFT 

compelled Tillotson long ago, to wish they were well 
rid of it; and, moreover, its Thirty-nine Articles, 
that precious medley of follies and contradictions, — 
a medley, however, which every one, owing to the 
inflexible nature of the church, is obliged to swallow 
before he can be ordained a minister ; and which Paley, 
after acknowledging that it was a Gordian-knot, en- 
deavoured to cut asunder, by declaring these articles 
articles of peace ; as if it would enable men to escape 
the guilt of falsehood, by treating bitter and con- 
tradictory professions of faith as physic, and swallow- 
ing them as a necessity ? These articles lie at the 
door of the church as a threshold of lying; and if 
perjury does not depend on a form of words, but on 
the inward denial of a solemn truth, — of perjury to 
every one of its ministers who is not wild enough to 
believe impossibilities; and in one university stand 
in the way of every student. The great Jeremy 
Bentham, one of the noblest, as well as most sagacious 
minds which ever blessed earth by its presence, has 
left on record what it cost him to subscribe them ; and 
numberless are the conscientious spirits which have 
turned away from them in disgust. Yet there they 
stand at the church- door, in all their glorious con- 
trariety, and would for ever stand while the church 
was a member of the state. 

When a church stands on its own simple basis, it 
may renovate its constitution; it may explode worn- 
out creeds ; abandon dogmas or rites that have become 
hideous in the increased light of universal knowledge, 
and preserve itself in keeping with the spirit of the age, 
and in consequent capacity for usefulness ; but, make 
it a portion of the state, and it immediately becomes 
a species of high treason to attempt the least change 
in it. Make its ministers illustrious with dignities, 
and fat with good livings, and they will for ever cry 



IN ALL AGES. 213 

"great is Diana of the Ephesians!" The church 
will be the best of churches, — immaculate and divine ; 
and they will growl on any one who even dares to 
look curiously at it, as a jealous dog growls over his 
bone. Make it the road to political power and 
honour, and you make its highest ministers the most 
obsequious slaves of state ; the most relentless enemies 
of freedom and mercy.* This has been too con- 

* The bulk of the incidents in the history of priestcraft, are 
bloody and revolting; but there are a few that are the very 
fathers of merriment. When Tetzel was selling indulgences in 
Germany for all sins past, present, and to come, and had well 
filled his saddle-bags with the money of pious fools of that 
generation, and was about to depart, a nobleman called on him 
to procure one for a future crime. Tetzel inquired what it was. 
The nobleman replied, he could not tell — he had not yet quite 
decided ; but the holy father could charge what he pleased, and 
leave that to him. Tetzel charged accordingly ; and the next 
day as he was riding through a wood in order to leave the coun- 
try, the nobleman met him, and seized on his saddle-bags. 
"This," said he, "is the sin I meant to commit!" Tetzel 
enraged at being thus outwitted, hastened back to the emperor 
full of wrath and complaints ; but when the nobleman appeared, 
it was with the indulgence in his hand which sanctioned the deed. 

Waller, in his life, gives a curious instance of prelatical 
obsequience, which most miraculously was w r ell met, by a 
brilliant instance of prelatical wit and independence. At a 
dinner with James I., were Neal, bishop of London, and 
Andrews, bishop of Winchester — "Have not I a right," said 
James," to take money from the people, without all this ceremony 
of going to parliament? " Undoubtedly your majesty has a 
right," replied Neal — "you are the breath of our nostrils!" 
" But what says my lord of Winchester?" added James. " I 
say," returned the bishop, " that your majesty has a right to take 
brother Neal's ; for he has given it you." 

Bloody Mary sent a commissioner over to Ireland, with a 
royal commission to the lord lieutenant to burn, destroy, and 
confiscate the property of the protestants, and bring them to what 
is called, justice. The man lodging at a widow Edmonds', in 
Chester, was waited on by the mayor; to whom he boasted that 
he had that with him that would bring the Irish heretics to their 
senses, and opening a box, he shewed him the commission. The 



214 PRIESTCRAFT 

spicuous in the house of peers. Lord Eldon said 
some years ago, in the house of lords, that he could 
not bring himself to believe the slave trade was 
irreconcileable with the Christian religion, as the bench 
of bishops had uniformly sanctioned by their votes, 
the various acts authorizing that trade. A biting 
sarcasm, which ever way intended !* 

Let us now hear our noble Milton, on the effect of 
a state religion. " That the magistrate should take 
into his power the stipendiary maintainance of church 
ministers, as compelled by law, can stand neither with 
the people's thought, nor with Christian liberty, but 
would suspend the church wholly upon the state, and 
turn the ministers into state pensioners. For the 
magistrate to make the church his mere ward, as 
always in minority; — the church, to whom he ought, 
as a magistrate, 'to bow down his face towards the 
earth, and lick up the dust of her feet/ — her to sub- 
ject to his political drifts, or conceived opinions, is 
neither just, nor pious ; no honour done to the 

widow, who had a brother in Ireland, a protestant, happened to 
hear this, and was alarmed. As the commissioner shewed the 
mayor down stairs, she adroitly withdrew the commission, and sup- 
plied its place with a sheet of paper, in which was wrapped a pack 
of cards, with the knave of clubs uppermost. The deception was 
undiscovered. On the commissioner's arrival at Dublin, he had 
an audience of the lord lieutenant, in the presence of a splendid 
assembly. He made a fine speech, and boasted much of his 
powers, when on going to produce his commission, behold, to 
the astonishment of himself and his hearers, nothing but the 
pack of cards, and the knave of clubs uppermost. " It was the 
queen's commission," said the crest-fallen delegate, "but how it is 
changed I know not." " Well," said the lord lieutenant, "you 
must return to England for fresh powers, and in the meantime 
we will shuffle the cards !" He returned; but he was too late — 
the queen was dead ; and on the subject being related to Eliza- 
beth, she was highly diverted by it, andsettled on Mrs. Edmonds 
40/. a year. 

* Morning Chronicle, Oct, 3\st, 1813. 



IN ALL AGES. 215 

church, but a plain dishonour : and upon her whose 
head is in heaven, — yea upon him who is the only 
head in effect ; and what is most monstrous, a human 
on a heavenly, a carnal on a spiritual, a political head 
on an ecclesiastical body ; which at length, by such 
hetrogeneal, such incestuous conjunction, transforms 
her ofttimes into a beast of many heads, and many 
horns." 

Such a beast has the church become by this state 
commerce, even by the confession of her friends ; and 
that commerce must be annihilated. Justice, im- 
partial justice, to this great and Christian nation 
demands it ; the growth of Christianity demands it ; 
the prosperity of the church itself demands it as well. 
This is a measure called for on behalf of the nation ; 
and there are numbers who will contend that, the 
church ceasing to be a state church, should restore its 
property to the nation whence it was drawn. That 
in strict justice all national property should revert to 
the nation when the object for which it was bestowed 
ceases, there can be no question ; in strict justice to 
the other Christian communities of this country, this 
ought clearly to be the case, — since, admitting the 
rights of conscience, the nation ought not to enrich 
one body of Christians at the expense of the rest ; and 
that parliament has a right to recall the loan of church 
property is clear as daylight. The present priest- 
hood form a standing proof and precedent of it, since 
it was taken from the Catholics and given to them. 
For my part I am perfectly easy to leave these matters 
in the hands of parliament ; so that its wealth undergo 
a further process of distribution ; its enormous salaries 
be broken down ; its pluralities exploded ; its sine- 
cures abolished ; and its labouring multitude more 
efficiently remunerated. 



216 PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 



Oh ! said the hind, how many sons have you 
Who call you mother, whom you never knew? 
But most of them who that relation plead 
Are such ungracious youths as wish you dead ; 
They gape at rich revenues which you hold, 
And fain would nibble at your grandame gold. 
Hind and Panther, 

He is the true atheist, the practical enemy to religion, who can 
offer to defend the present condition of the Church of England. 

Westminster Review, No. xxix. 



Having in the last chapter touched on the subject of 
the church revenue, we must not leave it without 
adverting to one particular. Whenever the excess 
of clerical income is introduced, we are immediately 
attempted to be disarmed by a statement that were 
the whole revenue of the church equally divided, it 
would give but about 112/. per annum to each clergy- 
man. The British or Clerical Magazine for March, 
1832, admits, from the Parliamentary Returns, that 
it would be 200/. per annum.* Now did we admit 
this to be correct, what a shame is it that in a church 
so economically provided, so many individuals should 
be allowed to wallow in the wealth and idleness they 
manage to combine. Can the church answer it to 

* The present Parliamentary Returns make it about 287/. 



IN ALL AGES. 217 

her conscience, if she have one, that in such a slen- 
derly beneficed system, there should be many a 
parish priest who holds from 1 to 5,000Z. a year, and 
that the scale of payment to its dignitaries should 
stand thus, according to their own shewing : — 

Archbishop of Canterbury £27,000 a year. 
York . . 10,000 — 



Bishop of Durham 

London 

— Winchester 
-Ely 



17,000 
14,000 
14,000 
12,000 



Nine others on an average 5,000 — 
The rest on an average . 3,000 — 

I am afraid we never can prove the church to be 
poor, or to have been at any time indifferent to the 
doctrine, that " godliness is great gain." There is 
nothing in which the spirit of priestcraft has shewn 
itself so grossly in the English clergy, as in their 
appropriation of what is called Queen Anne's Bounty. 
The most shameful selfishness and disregard of every 
thing like common honesty, like feeling for their 
poorer brethren, or respect for the motives of the 
deluded queen, mark the whole affair. The Edin- 
burgh Review, in an able article in No. LXXV., made 
a very salutary exposition of this wretched business. 
Let the reader take this condensed view of it : — 

" It is well known that, by the statute of Henry 
VIII. chap. 3, the first-fruits and tenths of spiritual 
preferments (which had formerly been paid to the 
Pope, or some other spiritual persons) were given to 
the king. The first-fruits were the revenues and 
profits for one year, of every such preferment, and 
were to be satisfied, or compounded for, on good 
security, by each incumbent, before any actual or real 
possession, or meddling with the profits of a benefice. 



218 PRIESTCRAFT 

The tenths were a yearly rent of a tenth part of all the 
revenues and emoluments of all preferments, to be 
paid by each incumbent at Christmas. These re- 
venues were, as the statute phrases it, united and 
knit to the imperial crown for ever ! By the same 
statute a provision was made for a commission to be 
issued by the king's highness, his heirs and succes- 
sors, from time to time, to search for the just and true 
value of the said first-fruits and profits ; and similar 
means were provided for ascertaining the value of 
tenths. In consequence of this statute, which was 
suspended during the papistical reign of Mary, but 
recovered by the 1st of Elizabeth, a valuation was 
made, which is supposed to have been at the time an 
accurate one, of the yearly profits of the ecclesiastical 
preferments : and, according to this valuation, the 
first-fruits and tenths were, as the 1st of Elizabeth 
has it, ' well and justly answered and paid, without 
grief and contradiction of the prelates and clergy of 
the realm, to the great aid, relief, and supportation of 
the inestimable charges of the crown,' which inesti- 
mable charges may then possibly have amounted to a 
two-hundredth part of the present yearly sum. 

" Under this valuation, which in course of time 
became quite unequal to the real emoluments of the 
preferments, these charges continued to be paid till 
the seeond year of Queen Anne, 1703 ; when an act 
was passed reciting the queen's most religious and 
tender concern for the church of England, stating 
that a sufficient settled provision for the clergy in 
many parts of the realm had never yet been made; 
and giving to a corporation, which was to be erected 
for the augmentation of small livings, the whole of 
the first-fruits and tenths. Her Majesty, however, 
in her religious and tender concern, was completely 
overreached by the clergy. The professed object of 



IN ALL AGES. 219 

the queen was to increase the provision of the poor 
clergy ; the real and only immediate effect of it was 
to release the rich clergy from a charge to which, by 
law, they were liable. We have before maintained 
that a provision was made in the statute of Henry 
VIII, for revising, from time to time, the valuations 
under which the first-fruits and tenths were paid. It 
is not improbable that the clergy ,were apprehensive, 
as the nation was then engaged in an expensive war, 
that such a revision might be made ; and in per- 
suading the queen to renounce her hereditary revenue 
for the sake of her poor clergy, they contrived most 
effectually to secure themselves by an ingenious clause 
in the statute in question. 

" If the real purpose of this act of Anne had been 
to augment the small livings, nothing could have 
been more reasonable than to do it by enforcing 
the legal claims for the first-fruits and tenths on the 
holders of the larger benefices. The scandalous 
poverty of some livings — for there were then 1071 
which did not exceed 1 OL a year — would then have 
speedily disappeared : but, as the old and inefficient 
rate of payment was fixed and made perpetual, the 
most religious queen went to her grave without seeing 
any effect from her bounty ; as, in consequence of 
the incumbrances on the fund, and the impossibility 
of increasing its produce, it was not till 1714 that the 
governors of the bounty were enabled to make their 
first grants. 

M The cunning of the rich clergy in thus shifting 
from themselves the burden of contributing to the 
relief of their poorer brethren, is only to be matched 
in degree by the folly shewn in the application of the 
diminished revenue which this trick of theirs still left 
for the improvement of small livings. At the time 
when Queen Anne's Bounty Fund was established 



220 PRIESTCRAFT 

there was, according to the returns, which were not 
quite accurate, 5597 livings in England and Wales 
with incomes not exceeding 501. They were thus 
classed : — 

Not exceeding 101 1071 

201. . • . . . 1467 

30Z 1126 

40Z 1049 

„ „ 50/ 886 

" The sum which the Governors of Queen Anne's 
Bounty had to apply to the augmentation of these 
livings, averaged about 13,000Z. a year. Any 
rational being would suppose that, under such cir- 
cumstances, the governors and the legislature, by 
whom the disposal of the money was directed and 
superintended, would have made some inquiry into 
the circumstances of the different livings. Some of 
these livings were of very small extent, and scarcely 
any population, and might therefore have been ad- 
vantageously united with one another, or with other 
parishes. The specific evil which was to be remedied 
was set forth in the preamble to the statute of Anne 
in these words : — \ That diverse mean and stipendiary 
preachers are, in many places, entertained to serve 
cures, and officiate there ; who, depending for their 
necessary maintenance upon the good- will and liking 
of their hearers, have been, and are, thereby under 
temptation of too much complying, and suiting their 
doctrines and teaching to the humours, rather than 
the good of their hearers, which has been a great 
occasion of faction and schism.' Precious philo- 
sophy ! At least, therefore, one would have thought 
that some distinction would have been made between 
places where there were many hearers, and where 
there were few or none. Some even, might have 
been so extravagant as to expect, that when a sum 



IN ALL AGES. 221 

was bestowed on any particular living, some security 
would have been taken for the residence of the incum- 
bent. All these notions were, however, very far 
from the minds of the persons who had the distribu- 
tion of Queen Anne's Bounty. The governors of 
this fund proceeded upon the idea which is commonly 
entertained in England respecting the church esta- 
blishment; especially by its own functionaries — that, 
provided a sufficient sum of money be laid out on the 
clergy, every other good will follow : that, how 
absurd soever the distribution may seem, it is not for 
human hands to destroy the latent harmony of casual 
proportions. Above all things did they eschew the 
idea, which the church abhors, that where the public 
confers an obligation, it has a right to exact the 
performance of a duty. Among the livings on 
which they had to scatter the money, several were 
large and populous parishes, where the tithes had 
been impropriated ; and these, if the holders of the 
tithes were not, as is often the case, ecclesiastical 
sinecurists — or dignitaries as they are called — whose 
incomes were at the disposal of Parliament, would 
have been proper objects for augmentation, — always 
supposing, what is false in point of fact, that an 
increase in the emoluments of a living has any ten- 
dency to secure the performance of clerical duties. 
Others were rectories, of which some were endowed 
with the tithe of all the produce of their district, but 
which were so insignificant as neither to need a sepa- 
rate clergyman, nor to afford a separate maintenance 
for him. In the case of such livings, instead of 
attempting to swell the incomes of needless offices, 
the natural course would have been, to have consoli- 
dated their neighbouring benefices, and in no case 
have made any augmentation, except where the 
revenue arising from a district of extent and popu- 



222 PRIESTCRAFT 

lation sufficient to need the cares of a clergyman, 
should have been found insufficient to maintain him. 
But this would have violated the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the excellent Church ; it would have insi- 
nuated a connexion between money expended and 
duty performed; it would have seemed like an adapt- 
ation of means to an end ; it would have made some 
inquiry and consideration necessary. 

" The governors of the Bounty proceeded bounti- 
fully ; they distributed a part of their money in sums 
of 200/. on any poor livings to which any private 
person would give an equal sum. The rest, and far 
greater part of their money, shewing them no respecter 
of persons nor of circumstances, these representatives 
of the ecclesiastical wisdom of the nation, distributed 
by lot, letting each poor living take an equal chance 
for a prize, without any regard to the degree of 
urgency of its claim. After this, the story of Bridoye 
deciding suits at law by dice, after making up a fair 
pile of papers on each side, seems no longer an extra- 
vaganza. Up to January 1, 1815, the governors had 
made, in this way, 7323 augmentations of 200/. ; but 
with benefices as with men, fortune is not propor- 
tioned to desert or necessity. Some of the least 
£>opulous parishes had a wonderful run of luck. We 
are not sure that, taking a few of those which meet 
our eye in running over the returns, we have selected 
the most remarkable. In the diocese of Chichester, 
the rectory of Hardham, which in 1811 contained 
eighty-nine persons, has received six augmentations 
by lot, or 1200/. The vicarage of Sollington, with 
forty-eight people, has had six augmentations, 1200/. 
In the diocese of Salisbury, Brewilham drew a prize ; 
it contained fourteen people. Rotwood drew an- 
other; it had twelve people. Calloes had 1000/. in- 
cluding a benefaction of 200/. ; its population was in 



IN ALL AGES. 223 

1811, nineteen. In the diocese of Winchester, Saint 
Swithin, with twenty-four people, has received 8001. 
including a benefaction of 200/. ; and 200/. has been 
expended on Ewhurst, which has seven people. In 
the diocese of York, Ruthewick, with sixty -two 
people, has had five prizes, 1000/.; while Armby, 
with 2941 people, and Allendale, with 3884, have 
gained only one each. In the diocese of Rochester, 
two livings, with twenty-eight and twenty-nine 
people, received separate augmentations. In the 
diocese of Oxford, Elford, or Yelford, with sixteen 
inhabitants, drew a prize. In Lincoln, Stowe, with 
the same number, and Haugh, received 800/. The 
number of all its inhabitants is eight. When it is 
considered too, that Haugh pays vicarial tithes, which 
amounted in the reign of Henry VIII, to 61. 135. 46?. 
of yearly value, it must be admitted that this im- 
portant district has been guarded against the danger 
of schism, with a liberality worthy of a Protestant 
government. If the rest of the people of England 
were fortified in sound doctrine, at the same rate of 
expense, the proper establishment of religious teachers 
in England and Wales would cost about 1200 mil- 
lions sterling, and 1,500,000 parochial clergy, who, 
as Dr. Cove allows each of them a family of nine, 
would form a considerable portion of the population. 
In the diocese of Landaff we find two places follow- 
ing each other in the returns, which illustrate the 
equity of le sort des dez. Usk, with 1339 people, 
has had an augmentation, though its value remains 
low. Wilcock, a rectory with twenty-eight people, 
has had three. In Hereford, Hopton-Cangeford has 
had 1000/. for thirty-five people. Monmouth, 200/. 
for 3503. 

" Even in cities, where the scattered condition of 
the population could afford no pretext against the 



224 PRIESTCRAFT 

union of parishes, the same plan of augmentations 
has been pursued. In Winchester, separate aug- 
mentations have been given to seven parishes, the 
population of all which would, united, have amounted 
to 2376, and would consequently have formed a very 
manageable, and rather small town parish. In short, 
the whole of the returns printed by the house of 
commons in 1815, No. 115, teem with instances of 
the most foolish extravagance, — just such a result as 
the original conception of this clerical little-go would 
have led any rational being to anticipate. The con- 
viction is irresistibly forced upon us, that nothing 
could have been further from the minds of those who 
superintended this plan, than to secure a competent 
provision for all the members of the church, and to 
remove the poverty of some of its members, — which 
is, by a strange manner of reasoning, made a defence 
for the needless profusion with which the public 
wealth is lavished upon others. Indeed, we are led 
to suspect, that c the church, in her corporate capa- 
city,' looks upon the poverty of some of her members 
as sturdy beggars look upon their sores ; she is not 
seriously displeased with the naked and excoriated 
condition of her lower extremities, so long as it 
excites an ill-judged compassion for the whole body, 
and secures her impunity in idleness and rapacity. 

" We are sometimes told that the poverty of a 
large body of the parochial clergy is such that it is 
out of the power of the higher clergy, even by the 
surrender of their whole revenues, to remedy it. The 
statement we have given shows most clearly that this 
poverty is to be attributed, in the first place, to the 
fraudulent subtraction of the higher clergy from the 
burden of contributing to the relief of their poorer 
brethren ; and, in the second place, to the absurdity 
of the ecclesiastical division of the kingdom, which, 



IN ALL AGES. 225 

on the slightest effort of the clergy, would have been 
remedied by the legislature. If the first-fruits and 
tenths had been paid subsequently to the gift of 
Anne, according to the rate which the law provided 
for, and as they had been paid, 'without grief or 
contradiction/ i. e. according to the real value of the 
benefices, instead of a million and half, at least 30 
millions would have been raised from these taxes ; — 
a sum not only quite sufficient to have removed the 
poverty of all the poor livings in the kingdom, but to 
have established schools in every parish of England, 
and to have left a large surplus for other useful 
purposes. 

" In the course of these augmentations no security 
has been taken against non-residence, or plurality. 
The governors go on, therefore, increasing the incomes 
of two small livings, in order to make each of them 
capable of supporting a resident clergyman ; while 
after, as well as before the augmentation, one incum- 
bent may hold them together — reside on neither — and 
allow only a small part of the accumulated income to 
a curate, who performs the duty of both !" 

This absurd system, which is at once an insult to 
the memory of Queen Anne, and to the whole British 
nation, has been continued to the present moment. 
By the returns made to the present parliament, the 
same shameful additions to rich livings of that which 
was intended to have gone to poor ones, are made 
apparent ; the same shamelessly miserable payment 
of the curates, who do the actual work for which the 
money is received by the selfish and the idle, has been 
continued. It is not within the compass of this 
volume to go at great length into these details; — a 
sample will suffice. These cases were lately adduced 
by Lord King in the house of peers. 

" Dean and Canon of Windsor, impropriator of the 

Q 



226 PRIESTCRAFT 

following parishes, received from parliamentary grant 
and Queen Anne's Bounty : — Plymsted, 1811, 600/. ; 

1812, 400/.; 1815, 300/. Plympton, ,600/. 

St. German's, 1811, 800/. ; 1814, 400/. Wembury, 

1807, 200/. ; 1816, 1400/. Northam, 1764, 200/. ; 
1812, 400/. South Moulton, 1813, 600/. 

" Dean and Canon of Winchester, impropriators of 
tithes of two large parishes in Wales : — Holt, 1725, 
200/. ; 1733, 200/. Iscoyd, 1749, 200/. ; 1757, 
200/. ; 1798, 200/. ; 1818, 200/. 

"Dean of Exeter, impropriator of tithe ; — Landkey, 
1775,200/.; 1810, 200/.; 1815,1400/. Swimbed, 
1750,200/.; 1811,400/. 

" Dean and Chapter of Carlisle, impropriators of 
valuable tithe :— Hesket, 1813,600/.; 1815, 2000/. 
to purchase land ; 1816, 300/. ; 1817, 300/. 

" Dean of Bangor, impropriator of tithe (curate 
paid 32/. 45.) :— Gyffin, 1767, 200/. ; 1810, 200/. ; 
1816, 1400/. 

" Bishop of Bangor, impropriator oi valuable tithe 
(curate paid 30/. 12s.) : — Llandegar, 1812, 200/. ; 
1815, 1600/.; , 300/. ; , 300/. 

" Bishop of Lichfield, impropriator of large tithes 
in Merionethshire (curate paid only 27/.) : — Tally lyr, 

1808, 200/. ; 1816, 1400Z. Penal, 1810, 200/." ' 
Thus these returns proved, that for thirteen 

parishes these Rev. Gentlemen had drawn 14,500/. 
which ought to have been paid from their own 
jackets. 

The Edinburgh Review, in the same able article 
above quoted, says — " Those who complain of the 
poverty of the clergy pretend to suppose that no 
security for residence is necessary ; and, that as soon 
as the small livings are raised high enough, non- 
residence will disappear as a matter of course. For 
instance, Dr. Cove says, * all the Church of England's 



IN ALL AGES. 22? 

sons are, with few exceptions, ever intent on their 
appropriate duties ; and would be still more diligent 
were each of them possessed of a more enlarged and 
comfortable independence, and furnished with more 
suitable abodes.' This, unfortunately for the Doctor, 
is more capable of being brought to the test than the 
6 unrecorded revelation' to Adam in favour of tithes. 
We have returns of small livings, and we have 
returns of non-residence. In the diocese of Rochester 
there are only six livings under 1501. sl year, and of 
those six not one is returned under 110Z. Of the 
107 benefices returned in that diocese, there were, in 
1809, but 50 with resident incumbents — less than 
half the livings. In the diocese of Chester, where 
the livings under 150/. a year are numerous, 377 out 
of 592 being of that description, a considerably larger 
proportion of the benefices have residents than in 
Rochester — there are 327 residents. In other dio- 
ceses the number of poor livings bears no regular 
proportion to the number of non-residents. The fact 
is, that under the discipline of the church of Eng- 
land, where there are so many grounds of exemption 
or of license for non-residence, the only persons who 
may be expected to reside, are those w T hose narrow 
incomes make their residence in their own parsonages 
a matter of necessity or convenience. 

I shall speedily have occasion to shew that in all 
countries where the incomes of the clergy are mo- 
derate, there the clergy themselves are at once the 
most attentive to their duties, and most respected and 
beloved by the people. For the present, the following 
statement from the Carlisle Journal will afford a 
striking confirmation of the justice of these remarks ; 
and so impressive an example of the shameless plu- 
ralities of the higher clergy, and the miserable manner 

Q2 



228 PRIESTCRAFT 

of their paying the poor labouring curates, as may 
render further selections superfluous. 

PLURALITIES, AND CURATES' STIPENDS. 



Small as is the see of Carlisle, it affords some 
admirable specimens of the working of the church 
system, and of these we will now give a sample. And 
first of the pluralists, we have — 

Hugh Percy, bishop of Carlisle, a prebend of St. 
Paul's, and a chancellor of Sarum. 

R. Hodgson, dean of Carlisle, vicar of Burgh- on- 
Sands, rector of St. George's, Hanover- square, and 
vicar of Hillington. 

E. Goodenough, prebend of Carlisle, Westminster,, 
and York ; vicar of Wath All Saints on Dearn, 
chaplain of Adwick, and chaplain of Brampton- 
Bierlow. 

S. J. Goodenough, prebend of Carlisle, rector of 
Broughton Poges, vicar of Hampton, and deputy 
lord-lieutenant of Cumberland. 

Win, Goodenough, archdeacon of Carlisle, rector 
of Marcham-le-Fen, and rector of Great Salkeld. 

W. Vansittart, D.D., prebend of Carlisle, master 
of Wigston's Hospital, Leicester, vicar of Waltham 
Abbas, and vicar of Shottesbrooke. 

W. Fletcher, chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle, 
prebend of York, vicar of Bromfield, vicar of Dalston, 
and vicar of Lazenby. 

It is not our intention, at present, to inquire into 
the incomes of these dignitaries; but as they are 
pretty considerable, it may be worth while just to 
contrast the salaries they award to those who really 
work, with the moneys they receive from the livings. 
The tithes received by the Dean and Chapter for 



IN ALL AGES. 229 

Hesket, amount to 1000Z. or 1500Z. a-year; they 
pay to the curate who does the duty 18Z. 5s. a-year! 
— that is to say, Is. a-day — being after the rate of 
the bricklayer's labourer's wages! In Wetheral and 
Warwick, the Dean and Chapter draw about 1000Z. 
a-year from tithes, and 1000Z. a-year from the church 
lands ; and they pay the working minister (probably 
one of the most exemplary and beloved men in 
England in his station) the sum of 501. a-year — the 
wages of a journeyman cabinet-maker! The tithes 
of the parishes of St. Cuthbert and St. Mary, amount 
at the least to 1500Z. a-year. The two curates (who 
do the duty) receive each the sum of 21. 13s. 4d. 
a-year ! ! ! And then, to the minor canons, who do 
the cathedral duty (such as it is), they pay the sum 
of 6s. Sd. a-year each ! The Dean and Chapter hold 
several other impropriate rectories, pay the curates 
a mere nominal sum for performing the duties, and 
pocket the tithes themselves — for doing nothing!" 

Carlisle Journal. 

The Rev. W. Pullen, rector of Little Gidding, 
Huntingdonshire, asserts in a pamphlet of his, that a 
late bishop held twelve places of preferment at the 
same time, and the greater number, parochial benefices! 

With such things as these before our eyes, — and 
which way can we turn and not see them ? — who can 
believe that the British public can much longer suffer 
the church to remain unregenerated ? Look where 
we will, we behold the most gross instances of 
simony, pluralities, non-residence, and penurious 
remuneration of the working clergy. But of these 
matters in the next chapter: — two other ramifications 
of the establishment which require reform — Eccle- 
siastical Courts and the Universities, I must passingly 
notice, and then close this. 

These two organs and auxiliaries must necessarily 



230 PRIESTCRAFT 

come within the sweep of any reform which visits 
effectually the church; — they are vital parts of that 
great priestly system which has so long rested in ease 
and comfort on the shoulders of this much-enduring 
country. As their reform is a necessary consequence 
of that of the church, I shall say less of them ; but 
they involve enormities of such a nature, as nothing 
but the apathy induced by long custom could have 
brought Englishmen to tolerate. 

The universities, founded and endowed by kings 
and patriotic men, for the general benefit and encou- 
ragement of learning in the nation, are monopo- 
lized by the priests of the establishment. All offices 
in them are in their hands ; no layman, much less 
a dissenter, can hold a post in them. The Thirty- 
nine Articles are set up like so many Giants Despair, 
to drive away with their clubs of intolerance all who 
will not kiss their feet. These chartered priests 
grasp the emoluments and the immunities of these 
ancient seats of learning, and triumphantly tell us of 
the great men which the establishment has produced. 
This is a little too much for the patience of any but 
an Englishman. Had the gates of these great schools 
been thrown open to the whole nation for whose 
benefit they were established, and to the popular 
spirit of improvement which has been busy in the 
world, they might have told us of thousands more as 
great, as good, and far wiser, inasmuch as they would 
have been educated in an atmosphere of a more 
liberal and genial character. As it is, they have 
lagged, like the establishment to which they are 
linked, behind the spirit of the age, to a degree which 
has disgusted the most illustrious even of their own 
sons. It never was my lot to make a practical 
acquaintance with the advantages or abuses of either 
of them ; but, if the best authorities are to be trusted., 



IN ALL AGES. 231 

the devil never found himself more in his element, 
since he descended from his position in the Tree 
of Knowledge, in the Garden of Eden, to mount 
those of Oxford and Cambridge. 

To the two great popular journals of Edinburgh 
and Westminster, the country is indebted for several 
most able expositions of the abuses of both spiritual 
courts and universities ; and the latter in No. XXIX. 
speaks thus — " The rents and fines arising from broad 
lands, amongst the most fair and fertile in the realm ; 
from lordly manors and goodly farms ; the profits of 
the advowsons of numerous and valuable benefices ; 
tithes, and tolls, and every advantage that earth can 
yield ; palaces, for such indeed are most of our 
colleges, for the habitation of the learned ; noble 
churches, halls, libraries, and galleries, for their use and 
delight, with gardens, groves, and pleasure-grounds ; 
plate, and pictures, and marbles ; a countless store of 
hidden books and MSS., as well as a more vulgar 
wealth, accumulated in vast sums of money, yielding 
interest in the funds, or upon mortgage. How 
strange would the large opulence appear, were the 
inventory correctly taken, to the inhabitants of foreign 
universities, which nevertheless are accounted wealthy; 
and not less strange to its rightful owners, the people 
of England, to a brave, generous and loyal people, who 
have been ready in all ages to contribute largely from 
their store to works of learning and piety, but who 
have been ill-requited by their rulers. 

" Astonishing is the wealth of our universities, 
greatly exceeding the sum of all the possessions of 
all the other learned bodies in the world ; yet would 
it be an unfair and injurious statement to affirm, that 
not a single shilling of their enormous income is truly 
applied to the purposes for which it was designed? 
The accusation is still more grave; not only do these 



232 PRIESTCRAFT 

corporations neglect to furnish any direct encourage- 
ment to the studious, but they offer much positive 
discouragement. The sedulous youth who entered 
the walls of his college thirsting for honourable dis- 
tinction, can best tell how his ardent curiosity was 
chilled by the oscitancy, the inertness, the narrow 
illiberality of those to whom he looked for assistance, 
excitement, and support. The favour that Locke 
found at Oxford is matter of history : Gibbon has re- 
corded his contemptuous scorn for i the monks of 
Magdalene.' It would be easy to name other chil- 
dren of genius, who have proved that the self-styled 
alma mater was a most unjust and cruel step-mother. 
" Amongst the evils of ecclesiastical sway, there is a 
mischief which annuls our universities, and destroys 
their very existence for every purpose of utility ; it 
arises out of their spiritual constitution, and converts 
establishments that ought to be schools of learning, 
into race-courses and amphitheatres, wherein compe- 
titors and gladiators, as worthless as our jockeys, or 
the Thracians of old, struggle, or collude, to get pos- 
session of livings. This is the grand, the sole object 
of academical existence ; the pursuit of learning is 
the flimsy pretext — the real aim is to obtain prefer- 
ment in the church. The cause of the evil must 
be instantly removed ; we will speak briefly of its 
operation. An university ought to be, and at all 
other places except Oxford and Cambridge really 
is, one establishment, every part co-operating for 
the augmentation and communication of knowledge. 
Simony, in its most pernicious form, has destroyed 
at once the unity and utility of institutions which we 
would gladly venerate. Ancient schools, designed 
for the use of the whole body, still exist at Oxford, 
to attest the degradation of modern times ; each of 
these is inscribed with the title of one of the liberal 



IN ALL AGES. 233 

sciences, or of one of the faculties, but it is never 
applied to the use for which it was designed. Nume- 
rous professors are decorated with honourable titles, 
and receive salaries for giving various lectures, which 
are never delivered ; or if, as sometimes happens, 
an obstinate statute, which cannot be neglected or 
evaded, compels him to discourse in public, the dis- 
honest priest gives what are significantly called * wall- 
lectures,' since he addresses himself to the walls 
alone ; and it is generally understood that no one 
ought to stand between them and their teacher. 
Unless these abuses be speedily remedied, it is mani- 
fest that the march of mind, of which some now 
boast, is a retreat, a shameful flight ; and if the 
schoolmaster be indeed abroad, as some affirm, it is 
because he is not at home : having robbed his scholars, 
the scoundrel has absconded. 

" The university of Oxford has long ceased to 
exist, except for the purpose of electioneering ; for 
some time it was doubtful whether it was creditable 
to represent its M. M. A. A. in parliament, but the 
dispute has been finally determined, and we may 
reasonably question, whether an unworthy abuse of 
almost unbounded patronage be not too high a price 
to pay for the credit, whatever it be, that arises from 
sitting for the sister university. Except for the pur- 
pose of vain pageants, designed to aucupate benefices, 
by cajoling the patrons, the university of Oxford has 
long ceased to exist ; for the purposes of learning it 
has been annihilated, dissolved, and destroyed, by 
having been divided into many minute, insignificant, 
and worthless portions. There are about thirty col- 
leges ; — the system of education, if it deserve that 
name, is separate and distinct at each, and miserable 
in all : the greater part of the funds, and the best 
apartments of every college, are set apart for a priest 



234 PRIESTCRAFT 

who, under the name of master, provost, warden, 
principal, or the like, enjoys at the expense of the 
public, every luxury that the most sensual could 
desire ; yet this person contributes as little to the 
instruction of the youth of his society, as the Chief 
of the Black Eunuchs in the Grand Sultan's seraglio, 
or the Jew who takes toll at one of the turnpikes 
near London. A stranger would suppose that, being 
thus pampered in idleness, and growing fat upon the 
appropriation of charitable funds, the reverend sine- 
curist, through a certain decorous shame, would be 
at least civil and unpresuming ; we appeal to those 
who are experienced in the deportment of contume- 
lious insolence, whether it be so. 

" The residue of the funds of the college is wasted 
upon a long list of fellows, the greater part of whom 
are absentees, and are alike unwilling and incapable 
of earning their salaries. The lowest and least of 
these is usually the tutor; — with or without the assist- 
ance of a drudge, still more unworthy than himself, 
this poor hack endeavours, by a few wretched lec- 
tures, to conceal the total want of all sound and 
wholesome instruction, and the monstrous misappli- 
cation of the wealth of the nation. He is often a 
man of low birth, whom laziness or physical infirmity 
rendered unfit for the flail or the loom ; and, having 
availed himself of some eleemosynary foundation, 
he has won his way to an office which ought to be 
accounted honourable, but, by the accumulation of 
the grossest abuses has been rendered servile. If the 
aspiring clown had elevated himself by a generous 
excellence, by a preeminence in liberal learning, his 
low birth far from being a stain, would shed a lustre 
upon his new station ; but under the present unhappy 
constitution of our universities, these mushrooms are 
culled for deleterious, not for wholesome properties. 



IN ALL AGES. 235 

If his birth was low, his mind is commonly lower ; 
he is not selected on account of his learning, but of 
his subserviency. When a teacher of gentle blood is 
taken, it may happen perchance, that although he was 
born a freeman, he has the soul of a slave. The 
fellowships in like manner, are for the most part con- 
ferred upon kinsmen, upon tools, upon all but those 
who are best entitled to hold them. It may be that, 
with much pomp and ceremony, and an ostentatious 
display of the favour shewn to letters, some little 
proficient in the course of elementary instruction, 
prescribed to keep up the shew of attention to edu- 
cation, is now and then put into possession of one of 
those valuable annuities ; but the yawning sluggard, 
the dull sot, is generally deemed more eligible than 
the zealous scholar. 

" Let us suppose, however, that all fellowships 
were fairly bestowed upon the young men who were 
most worthy to hold them, still would our universi- 
ties fall far short of that utility which we have an 
unalienable right to insist upon reaping from our 
public domains. In the case we have supposed, all 
improvement would cease at the end of the first year 
of academical residence ; after taking the first degree 
there would be no motive to advance further on the 
road to learning. Each college would be, as it now 
is, a clerical tontine ; an abominable institution, alike 
hostile to learning and subversive of piety. Surely 
our sagacious, clear-headed fellow-countrymen are 
not aware that every one of the numerous colleges 
which they maintain at such an enormous cost, is 
merely a clerical tontine ! The instant a young man 
is elected a fellow, he has but one object ; to outlive 
his brethren, — and thus to receive, in succession, the 
valuable benefices attached to his college, which were 
designed to reward the most learned, but which are 



236 PRIESTCRAFT 

blindly and dishonestly handed over to the longest 
liver. 

Now what is thus written in the present day, is 
exactly of the same stamp as what was uttered by 
Gibbon: — " The schools of Oxford and Cambridge 
were founded in a dark age of false and barbarous 
science ; and they are still tainted with the vices of 
their origin. Their primitive discipline was adapted 
to the education of priests and monks ; and their 
government is still in the hands of the clergy, an order 
of men whose manners are remote from the present 
world, and whose eyes are dazzled by the light of 
philosophy. " Nay, it is exactly the same as what 
Milton wrote in his time. We hear those who have 
studied there continually declaring that the system of 
education pursued is infinitely behind that given by 
dissenters to their ministers, so far as it regards their 
real preparation for the office of Christian teachers. I 
have frequently heard young men declare that they 
had no need to study there. With a certain quantity 
of mathematics, or of Greek and Latin, they could 
take a degree, and that was enough. So it must have 
been in Milton's days. "They pretend that their 
education either at school or university hath been 
very chargeable, and therefore ought to be repaired in 
future by a plentiful maintainance ; whereas it is well 
known that the better half of them are oft-times poor 
and pitiful boys, that having no merit, or promising 
hopes, that might entitle them to the public provision, 
but their poverty, and the unjust favour of friends ; 
have had their breeding both at school and university 
at the public cost ; which might engage them the 
rather to give freely, as they have freely received. 

" Next it is a fond error, though too much believed 
among us, to think that the university makes a 
minister of the gospel. That it may conduce to other 



IN ALL AGES. 237 

arts and sciences, I dispute not now, but that which 
makes fit a minister the Scriptures can best tell us to 
be only from above. How shall they preach, unless 
they be sent ? By whom sent ? By the university, 
or the magistrate, or their belly ? No surely ; but 
sent from God only, and that God who is not their 
belly. And whether he be sent from God, or from 
Simon Magus, the inward sense of his calling and 
spiritual ability will sufficiently tell him. 

" But yet, they say, it is also requisite he should 
be trained up in other learning, which can be had no 
where better than at the universities. I answer, that 
what learning, either human or divine, can be neces- 
sary to a minister, may as easily and less chargeably 
be had in any private house. How deficient else, 
and to how little purpose are all those piles of sermons, 
notes, and comments on all parts of the Bible, — 
bodies and marrows of divinity, beside all other 
sciences in our English tongue ; many of the same 
books which in Latin they read at the university? 
And the small necessity of going there to learn Di- 
vinity I prove first from the most part of themselves, 
who seldom continue there till they have well got 
through logick, their first rudiments. And those 
theological disputations there held by professors and 
graduates, are such as tend least of all to the edifi- 
cation or capacity of the people, but rather perplex 
and leaven pure doctrine with scholastical trash, than 
enable any minister to the better preaching of the 
gospel.' " Milton on Hirelings. 

When past and present authorities thus agree to 
describe the great universities of the nation, wo be 
to that nation if it do not break the slumbers of 
these clerical drones, throw wide the gates to the 
influx of real knowledge, and of all those who thirst 
for knowledge, that we mav never more hear of such 



238 PRIESTCRAFT 

men as Locke being expelled for their love of free- 
dom, or Wesley for their piety. 

Of the continuance of ecclesiastical courts to this 
enlightened period, what shall we say, — but that 
Englishmen are a most patient race ? A dark and 
mysterious assemblage as of bats and owls ! A sort 
of Inquisition shorn of its power by public opinion, 
and suffered by public opinion to exist. Priests, 
allowed no longer to summon men to their hidden 
tribunals, and rack their persons, but permitted still 
to seize on their wills with rude hands, and rack their 
purses without mercy ! Clerical peers and clerical 
legislators are anomalous enough ; but clerical taxers 
of orphans, and clerical guardians of testamentary 
documents, are still more anomalous. Here is a 
popish institution existing in a protestant country, 
which even popish countries have abandoned, and 
conveyed its functions into the hands of laymen ! Our 
wise Saxon ancestors suffered nothing of this kind 
amongst them : it is true they permitted bishops to 
take their seats in the civil courts to protect their 
own rights, but it remained for the Norman invader 
to concede to Rome this dangerous privilege of cleri- 
cal courts. Time and knowledge have thrown into 
desuetude most of those powers by which they for- 
merly harassed our forefathers. They no longer 
trouble themselves about the reformation of manners, 
the punishing of heresy ; nor do churchwardens care 
to present scandalous livers to the bishop : but refuse 
to pay a fee, and they will speedily " curse thee to 
thy face." They are in fact a sort of obscure and 
dusty incorporations for collecting and enjoying good 
revenues, under the names of bishop, surrogates, 
proctors, registrers, deputy-registrers, and so forth, 
from fees on wills, consecrations, and various other 
sources and immunities. For the greediness of these 



IN ALL AGES. 239 

clerical owls in past days, let any one consult 
Chaucer. The worthy Lyon-king-at-arms of Scotland, 
Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, also made merry 
with them in his days : 

Marry, I lent my gossip my mare to fetch home coals, 

And he her drowned in the quarry holes. 

And I ran to the consistorie, for to pleinze, 

And there I fell among a greedy meinze. 

They gave rne first a thing they call cilandum ; 

Within eight days I got but libellandum ; 

Within a month I got ad apponendum ; 

In half a year I got inter loquendum ; 

And then I got — how call ye it 1 — ad replicandum ; 

But I could never a word yet understand "em. 

And then they made me pull out many placks, 

And made me pay for four and twenty acts ; 

But ere they came half way to concludendum, 

The devil a plack was left for to defend him. 

Thus they postponed me two years with their train ; 

Then, hodie ad octo, bade me come again. 

And then, their rooks, they croaked wonderous fast ; 

For sentence silver they cried at the last. 

Of pronunciandum , they made me wonder fain, 

But I never got my good grey mare again ! 

This is spoken in the character of a poor man ; 
another character then adds, 

My Lords, we must reform these consistory laws, 
Whose great defame, above the heaven blows. 
I knew a man, in sueing for a cow, 
Ere he had done, he spent full half a bow.* 
So that the king's honour we may advance, 
We will conclude as they have done in France ; 
Let spiritual matters pass to spiritualitie, 
And temporal matters unto temporalitie. 

Satyre of Three Estaites. 

Whoever would see what troublesome and extor- 
tionate nuisances these courts are, has only to consult 
the voluminous returns made to parliament in 1829 
on this subject. Amongst the lesser evils of the 

* Half a fold of cows. 



240 PRIESTCRAFT 

system are the consecration of burial grounds, and 
what are called surplice fees. Nothing is more 
illustrative of the spirit of priestcraft than that the 
church should have kept up the superstitious belief 
in the consecration of ground in the minds of the 
people to the present hour, and that, in spite of edu- 
cation, the poor and the rich should be ridden with 
the most preposterous notion that they cannot lie in 
peace except in ground over which the bishop has 
said his mummery, and for which he and his rooks, 
as Sir David Lindsay calls them, have pocketed the 
fees, and laughed in their sleeves at the gullible fool- 
ishness of the people. When will the day come when 
the webs of the clerical spider shall be torn not only 
from the limbs but the souls of men ? Does the honest 
Quaker sleep less sound, or will he arise less cheer- 
fully at the judgment-day from his grave, over which 
no prelatical jugglery has been practised, and for 
which neither prelate nor priest has pocketed a doit ? 
Who has consecrated the sea, into which the British 
sailor in the cloud of battle-smoke descends, or who 
goes down, amidst the tears of his comrades, to 
depths to which no plummet but that of God's omni- 
presence ever reached? Who has consecrated the 
battle-field, which opens its pits for its thousands and 
tens of thousands ; or the desart, where the weary 
traveller lies down to his eternal rest? Who has 
made holy the sleeping place of the solitary mission- 
ary, and of the settlers in new lands ? Who but He 
whose hand has hallowed earth from end to end, and 
from surface to centre, for his pure and almighty 
fingers have moulded it ! Who but He whose eye 
rests on it day and night, watching its myriads of 
moving children — the oppressors and the oppressed — 
the deceivers and the deceived — the hypocrites, and 
the poor whose souls are darkened with false know- 



IN ALL AGES. 241 

ledge and fettered with the bonds of daring selfish- 
ness ? and on whatever innocent thing that eye rests, 
it is hallowed beyond the breath of bishops, and the 
fees of registrers. Who shall need to look for a con- 
secrated spot of earth to lay his bones in, when the 
struggles and the sorrows, the prayers and the tears 
of our fellow men, from age to age, have consecrated 
every atom of this world's surface to the desire of a 
repose which no human hands can lead to, no human 
rites can secure ? Who shall seek for a more hal- 
lowed bed than the bosom of that earth into which 
Christ himself descended, and in which the bodies of 
thousands of glorious patriots, and prophets, and 
martyrs, who were laid in gardens and beneath their 
paternal trees, and of heroes whose blood and sighs 
have flowed forth for their fellow men, have been left 
to peace and the blessings of grateful generations with 
no rites, no sounds but the silent falling of tears and 
the aspirations of speechless, but immortal thanks ? 
From side to side, from end to end, the whole world 
is sanctified by these agencies, beyond the blessings 
or the curses of priests ! God's sunshine flows over 
it, his providence surrounds it; it is rocked in his 
arms like the child of his eternal love ; his faithful 
creatures live, and toil, and pray in it ; and, in the 
name of heaven, who shall make it, or who can need 
it holier for his last resting couch ! But the greedi- 
ness of priests persists in cursing the poor with ex- 
tortionate expenses, and calls them blessings. The 
poor man, who all his days goes groaning under the 
load of his ill-paid labours, cannot even escape from 
them into the grave except at a dismal charge to his 
family. His native earth is not allowed to receive 
him into her bosom till he has satisfied the priest and 
his satellites. With the exception of Jews, Quakers 
and some few other dissenters, every man is given 

R 



242 PRIESTCRAFT 

up in England as a prey, in life and in death, to the 
parson, and his echo, and his disturber of bones. 

The following, from the Leeds Mercury, is a fair 
example of the expense incurred for what is called 
consecration of the smallest addition to a burial- 
ground — and wretched must be the mental stupidity 
of a people who can believe that such fellows can add 
holiness to the parish earth. 

To the churchwardens of Tadcaster was sent the 
following letter : — 

(copy.) 

Gentlemen, — I send you enclosed the charges on the conse- 
cration of the additional churchyard at Tadcaster. 

I am, Gentlemen, vour obedient servant, 

JOSEPH BUCKLE. 

York, 26th March, 1829. 

Fees on consecration of the additional Burial-ground 
at Tadcaster. 

1828. £. s. d. 

Drawing and engrossing the petition to the Arch- 
bishop to consecrate ------ 

Drawing and engrossing the sentence of consecration 

Drawing the Act 

Registering the above instruments and the deed at 

length, and parchment - 
The Chancellor's fee ----- - 

The principal Register's fee - 

The Secretary's fee ----- - 

The Deputy Register's attendance and expenses 

The Apparitor's fee - 

Tee on obtaining the seal - 

Carriage -------- 



1 


5 





2 


2 








13 


6 


2 


2 





5 








5 








5 








3 


15 


6 


1 


1 





1 


1 








5 






£27 5 

For burying a poor man this is the common scale 
of charge in this town : — For the burial of even a 
pauper 7s. 6d. — for a child six months old, the same 
— if the child be not baptized, Is. ; for in that state 
it is, by clerical logic, deemed not a human being, 
but a thing, until their mummery has ennobled it — 



IN ALL AGES. 2 13 

a thing beneath God's notice — it is therefore thrust 
into any hole by the sexton. In the principal 
churchyard, a man who wishes to choose the place of 
burial must pay 101. for the size of a grave ; and 
for opening such a grave, about 21. 15s. 6d. For 
opening a vault, even in village churchyards, ol. is 
commonly demanded ; in the church 1 Ol. ; and what 
is worst, after all, it has been proved by more than 
one legal decision, no man's family vault is sacred 
and inviolable. The church and churchyard are the 
parson's freehold. In them, during his life, he can 
work his own will, but he cannot sell a right of vault 
beyond his own life. There are numbers of families 
who flattered themselves they had a place of family 
sepulture into which no stranger could intrude ; but 
let them excite the wrath of some clerical parish 
tyrant, and he can shew them that not only can he 
refuse to permit the opening of their vault to receive 
their dead till his demands, however exorbitant, are 
satisfied, but that he can refuse to have it opened at 
all ; and moreover, can thrust in, at his pleasure, the 
carcasses of the vilest wretches in the parish. Thus, 
by dealing with priests, the people are served as they 
always have been — juggled out of their money for 
" that which is nought ;" and thrown into the abso- 
lute power of a most mercenary order of men. They 
are suffered to buy that which cannot be really sold ; 
and when they look for a freehold, they find only a 
trap for clerical fees. From root to branch the whole 
system is rotten ; — give ! give ! give ! is written on 
every wall and gate of the church : and though a man 
quit it and its communion altogether, he must still 
pay, in life and in death, to it. Nay, by a recent 
case in the diocese of Salisbury, it is shewn by the 
bishop that a man once having taken orders can 
never lay them down again. A Mr. Tiptaft having 



244 PRIESTCRAFT 

resigned his living from conscientious motives, began 
to preach as a dissenter ; but the bishop attempted 
to stop his mouth with menacing the thunders of the 
church ; and, on his astonished declaration that he 
was no longer a son of the church, the prelate let him 
know that he was, and must be — for clerical orders, 
like Coleridge's infernal fire — must 

Cling to him everlastingly. 
To this church, which empties the pockets of the 
poor, and stops the mouth of the conscientious dis- 
senter, let every Englishman do his duty. 












7: ' ISVSWOlf 

he tisifo Ik 



IN ALL AGES. 245 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 



The Church of England is unpopular. It is connected with 
the crown and the aristocracy, but is not regarded with affection 
by the mass of the people ; and this circumstance greatly lessens 
its utility, and has powerfully contributed to multiply the num- 
ber of dissenters. Edinburgh Review, No. lxxxviii. 

We are overdone with standing armies. We have an army of 
lawyers with tough parchments and interminable words to con- 
found honesty and common sense ; an army of paper to fight 
gold ; an army of soldiers to fight the French ; an army of 
doctors to fight death ; and an army of parsons to fight the 
devil — of whom he standeth not in awe ! 

The late William Fox of Nottingham. 



But while the nation demands those alterations just 
enumerated, the internal prosperity, nay the very 
existence of the episcopal church, as a vital and fruit- 
ful Christian community, demands others. And first 
of all, that it should be delivered from the curse of 
patronage, — the source of a thousand evils, — the 
cause of lamentable moral lethargy and paralysis. 
While every Christian society around it enjoys the 
just privilege of choosing its own ministers, will it be 
long endured by this church that it should be kept in 
a condition of everlasting tutelage ; that its members, 
however wise, enlightened, and capable of managing 
all their affairs for themselves ; who would hold it as 
the highest insult that the state should appoint over- 
seers to choose for their children schoolmasters, and 



246 PRIESTCRAFT 

for themselves stewards, attorneys, or physicians — 
will it be endured long that some state favourite who 
never saw them, or their place; or some neighbouring 
fox-hunting squire, whose intellect, if it exhibit itself 
any where, is in his boot-heels, — that some horse - 
jockey, or gambler, some fellow whose life is a con- 
tinual crime, his conversation a continual pestilence ; 
who, if he were a poor man, would have been long 
since hanged, but being a rich one, he is at once the 
choicest son and purveyor of Satan, and the hereditary 
selector of the minister of God, — will it be endured 
that such a man shall put in over the heads of a 
respectable, pious, and well-informed community, a 
spiritual guide and teacher ? — put him in, in spite of 
their abhorrence and remonstrances ? and that once in, 
neither patron nor people shall get him out, though 
he be dull as the clod of his own glebe, and vicious 
as the veriest scum of his parish, who prefers the pot- 
house to his polluted house of prayer ? From this 
source has flowed the most fatal results to the church ; 
nay, it may be safely asserted, nine-tenths of the 
evils which afflict it. By this means it has been filled 
with every species of unworthy character ; — men who 
look upon it as a prey ; who come to it with coldness 
and contempt ; who gather its fruits, while other and 
better men toil for them ; and squander them in 
modes scandalous not merely to a church but to human 
society. By this means it has been made the heritage 
of the rich man's children, while the poor and unpa- 
tronized man of worth and talent has plodded on in its 
labours, and despaired. By this means so worldly a 
character has grown upon its ministers, that they have 
become blind to the vilest enormities of the system, 
and now look on simony as a matter of course. 
Whoever doubts this — and yet who does doubt it ? — 
let him look into the British, or Clerical Magazine, 



IN ALL AGES. 247 

and he will find the reverend correspondents asking 
with the utmost simplicity — how can the bishops help 
men selling advowsons ? It never seems once to 
occur to them, that if there were no clerical buyers 
there would be no sellers. In the same journal for 
June, 1832, p. 357, is also the following statement ; — 
" Of the whole number of benefices in England, very 
nearly 8000, that is, more than two-thirds of the 
whole, are in private patronage. Of the clergy, a 
very considerable number have purchased the livings 
which they hold ; and of the remainder, most have 
been brought up to the church, and educated with a 
view to some particular piece of preferment in the 
gift of their family and relations. Whether this be right 
or wrong, it is an effect almost necessarily following 
from so large a portion of the property of the church 
being private property ; a state of things not to be 
altered, and which they who wish to abolish pluralities 
do not talk of altering." 

Now here in one sentence, written by a clergyman, 
and published in a clerical magazine, we have the 
root and ground of three-fourths of the evils and 
enormities of the establishment. We have a state- 
ment, that out of 10,000 livings in England, nearly 
8,000 are in the hands of private people ; that is, in 
the hands each of a man who, whatever be his life or 
his qualifications for judging, can and does put in a 
clergyman over the heads of his neighbours, to serve 
his own views, which are commonly to establish some 
rake or blockhead of a son or nephew, or to make 
what money he can out of a stranger, if he has no 
children ; that is, not to seek the most pious man, 
but the highest bidder. And consequently the next 
assertion is, that a very considerable number have 
purchased these livings; — thus, not the pious man, 
but the highest bidder, the boldest dealer in simony 



248 PRIESTCRAFT 

has had the livings. Oh ! poor people who are doomed 
to sit under such pastors, and vainly hope to grow 
in heavenly knowledge ! The remainder, says this 
most logical writer, have been brought up with a 
view to some particular piece of preferment from 
their friends and relations. Yes, younger sons — no 
matter what their heads or their hearts are made of — 
doomed to deal out God's threats and promises to the 
people. Desperate handlers of God's sacred things — 
who rush fearlessly into his temple, not because he 
has called them, but because their relations have the 
key of the doors. And all this, this clerical writer 
puts forth with the most innocent face imaginable. 
While he enumerates causes enough to have made 
St. Paul's hair stand on end ; when he tells us that 
simony is common as daylight ; that the bulk of the 
livings in England are not open to the pious and the 
worthy, but are the heritage of certain men who may 
be neither — he is so far from seeing any thing amiss, 
that he goes on to point out the advantage of such a 
state of things. He declares it cannot be altered ; 
and this is one of his reasons why the church should 
not be reformed. He does not at all perceive that 
no church with so scandalous and preposterous a 
foundation, can possibly stand many years in the 
midst of a country where the spirit of man is busily 
at work to pry into the nature of all things, and 
where any monopoly, but especially of religious pa- 
tronage, must assuredly arouse an indignation that 
will overturn it. Miserably dark must be the moral 
atmosphere of a church where its members come for- 
ward with a mental obtuseness like this, to advocate 
its abominations as if they were virtues, while the 
very people gape round them with astonishment, and 
they perceive it not. But there are no labourers in 
the demolition of a bad institution like its own friends. 



IN ALL AGES. 249 

They are like insects in a rotten tree ; roused by ex- 
ternal alarm to activity, they bustle about and scatter 
the trunk, which holds them, into dust. Such men 
put a patch of new arguments into the old garment 
of corruption, and the rent is made worse. 

To proceed. — By these means the church has 
been filled with pride and apathy; and it is noto- 
rious, that of all Christian ministers, the ministers of 
the establishment are the least interested in their 
flocks, — cultivate and enjoy the least sympathy with 
them. I accidentally, the other day, took up Sir 
Arthur Brooke Faulkner's Tour in Germany, and 
immediately fell on this passage, which coming from 
a man fresh from the observation of the continental 
churches, is worthy of attention. " Nowhere else 
in Europe are clergymen, and no wonder, less re- 
spected among the multitude than in the British 
dominions." He proceeds to account for this by 
their apathy, their pluralities, their exorbitant reve- 
nues, maintenance by tithes, and acting as legislators. 
He adds — " If the statement which has already been 
alluded to may be credited, the clergy of the United 
Kingdoms are paid more than the clergy of all the 
rest of Christendom besides by a million sterling and 
upwards, the full amount of their annual revenue 
being 8,852,000?. In primitive times, and in the 
different countries at the present time which I have 
visited, the remuneration of their labour is, as we 
have seen, in many cases, chiefly voluntary. In 
these countries it needs no prelacy strutting in lawn 
sleeves, and * raising their mitred fronts in courts 
and parliaments,' to clothe it with respect." 

This, in contradiction of the many assertions of 
the advocates of our English establishment, who con- 
tend that without dignities and large revenues the 



250 PRIESTCRAFT 

clergy would sink into contempt, is borne out by the 
experience of all the world. The dignities and large 
revenues of the papal church did not embalm its 
clergy in public estimation; and to whatever country 
we turn, we find that wherever the clergy are but 
moderately endowed, there they are diligent, and there 
they are esteemed. What is the opinion of Milton, 
of the preferments which have been so much vaunted 
as stimulants to activity and talent in the church ? 
That they are but " lures or loubells, by which the 
worldly-minded priest may be tolled, from parish to 
parish, all the country over." The Scotch clergy are 
but slenderly incomed, and what is the testimony of 
their countrymen, the Edinburgh Reviewers, con- 
cerning them ? " In Scotland there are 950 parish 
clergymen, whose incomes may average 275Z. a-year 
each ; and the Scottish clergy are not inferior in 
point of attainments to any in Europe : no complaints 
have ever been made of the manner in which they 
perform their duty ; but, on the contrary, their ex- 
emplary conduct is the theme of well-merited and 
constant eulogy." 

Let us now turn again to Sir A. B. Faulkner's 
account of the German clergy. — " The Hessean clergy 
are exemplary in the discharge of their multifarious 
duties. A clergyman, no matter what his grade, 
deems it in no respect derogatory from his dignity to 
prove his faith by his works. The spiritual and 
temporal comfort of their flocks, and their nurture 
in all sound impressions of religion, is their unceasing 
care; while they hold out, in their own respectable 
and uncompromising conduct, both in public and 
private, the fairest patterns to enforce the precepts 
which they teach. However this may appear to our 
church of Englanders, it is fact. The average of a 



IN ALL AGES. 251 

Hessean clergyman's stipend, is about forty dollars 
a- year — the dollar three shillings Stirling — to which 
there is added a house and garden, or little farm." 

"The clergy at Marberg," he says, "are, in the 
strictest sense, a working clergy. They are per- 
petually among their flocks, correcting and training, 
and guiding; and in such unremitting labours of 
love, earn a reputation not the less likely to abide by 
them for being the capital on which they must chiefly 
rely for most of their comforts and happiness. And 
it surely is most fitting there should exist this reci- 
procity of feeling and good offices between the pastor 
and his flock. The protestant and the catholic are 
on the best possible footing with each other; and 
share equally in the offices of government." Wherever 
he mentions the clergy, it always is in similar terms, 
It is only necessary for us always to remember that 
this is a clergy very moderately paid, and we then see 
the exact value of the arguments for high salaries. 

Sorry should I be to see our noble ecclesiastical 
piles deserted and falling to decay, because the 
national funds were withdrawn ; but I should like to 
see them filled with ministers of zeal, and overflowing 
congregations. Sorry should I be to see, in my 
Sunday rambles into the country, the picturesque 
village church deserted by its accustomed minister, 
and occupied by some ignorant and clamorous fanatic ; 
but I should rejoice when I entered, to find there, not 
a mere journeyman hireling, but the worthy pastor, — 
not a man standing like a statue, and reading in 
monotonous tones, a discourse cold as his own looks ; 
but one full of overflowing love, and a lively though 
rational zeal, that made his hearers warm at once to 
him, towards each other, and towards God ; and when 
we went forth I should be glad to see, not what I too 
often see, a stately person who smiles sunnily, shakes 



252 PRIESTCRAFT 

hands heartily, talks merrily with the few wealthy of 
his fold ; gives to those of a lower grade a frigid nod 
of recognition ; to the poor a contemptuous forgetful- 
ness of their presence, and stalks away in sullen 
stateliness to his well-endowed parsonage. Whatever 
be chargeable on the catholic priests, it cannot be 
denied that they excite a strong and lasting attach- 
ment in their followers. They are more affable, more 
humble in manner, kind and condolent in spirit, and 
are found diligently at the bedside of the sick, and at 
the councils of the poor man beset with difficulties. 
But he who enters on his living as his birth-right, 
who looks on himself as a gentleman, and his hearers 
as clowns, what can arouse his zeal ? He who has 
no fear of censure, or removal, whence spring his 
circumspection and activity ? " My father," said the 
natural son of a nobleman, " said to me — it is time 
you should choose a profession. You must not be a 
tradesman, or you cannot sit at my table ; you have 
not shrewdness enough for a lawyer; you would 
forget, or poison your patients through carelessness 
were you a physician; — I must make a parson, or 
some devil of a thing of you; — and he made a parson 
of me ; — and I hate the church and every thing belong- 
ing to it ! " From such ministers what can be expected ? 
and such ministers are supplied to the church in 
legions by this odious system of private patronage. 
The ambition of maintaining the character of gentle- 
men has made clergymen cold, unimpassioned, insipid 
and useless. It was the same in the latter days of 
popery. Chaucer sketches us a priest. 

That hie on horse willith to ride 
In glitterande golde of grete arraie, 
Painted and portrid all in pride, 
No common knight maie go so gaie ; 



IN ALL AGES. 253 

Chaunge of clothing every daie, 
With goldin girdils grete and small, 
As boistrous as is bere at baie, 
All soche falshede mote nedis fall. 



Now we don't want a set of fine gentlemen; we 
want a race of zealous, well-informed, kind and 
diligent parish priests. If we must have gentlemen, 
let us have them of the school of the carpenter's 
son, whom honest Decker, the tragic poet, declares 
was 

A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed ! 

After this pattern, we care not how many gentlemen 
we have in the church; — gentlemen who are not 
ashamed, like their master Christ, to be the friends of 
the poor. Who desire to live for them ; to live 
among them; to learn their wants, to engage their 
affections, to be their counsellors and guides. Men 
who can understand and sympathise with the strug- 
gling children of poverty and toil, in villages and 
solitary places, and are therefore understood by them, 
and are beloved by them, and will follow them and 
make their precepts the rule of their lives and the 
precious hope of their deaths. Oh ! what have not 
our clergy to answer for to God and to their country, 
that they are not such men; what blessings may 
they not become by being such ! I know no men 
whose sphere of influence is more capacious and more 
enviable. It is the easiest thing in the world to 
become the very idol of the poor; there needs but 
to shew them that you feel for them, and they are all 
ardour and attachment. For the man who will con- 
descend to be what Christ was, a lover of the poor, 
they will fly at a word over land and water in his 
service. He has but to utter a wish, and if it be in 
their power, it is accomplished. In the language of 



254 PRIESTCRAFT 

Wordsworth, " it is the gratitude of such men that 
oftenest leaves us mourning." The parish clergyman 
has facilities of aiding the poor, that few other men 
have. At his slightest recommendation, the medical 
man is ready to afford them his aid ; at his suggestion 
the larder and the wardrobe of the hall expand with 
alacrity their doors, and the ladies are ready to fly and 
become the warmest benefactresses of the afflicted. I 
am ready to admit that there are many such men already 
in England ; but were it not for the cursed operation 
of this private patronage, there would be thousands 
more such. Numbers who now have no hope but 
of doing the drudgery of a curacy, would then be 
called by the voice of a free people, to a course of 
active usefulness. The land would be filled with 
burning and shining lights that are now hidden 
beneath the bushels of stipendiary slavery, and the 
effect on our labouring population would soon be 
auspiciously visible. 

But what is the actual picture presented to us now 
under the operation of this detestable system ? Look 
where we will, we behold the most gross instances of 
simony, pluralities, non-residence, and penurious re- 
muneration of the working clergy. If every man 
were to declare his individual experience, such things 
would make part of his knowledge. In towns, where 
the clergy are more under the influence of public 
opinion, we see too many instances of lukewarmness, 
arrogance, and unfitness. I have seen gamblers, 
jockeys, and characterless adventurers put into livings 
by the vilest influence, to the horror and loathing of 
the helpless congregations — and that in populous 
cities ; but in obscure, rural villages, the fruits of the 
system are ten-fold more atrociously shameful. There 
the ignorant, the brutal, the utterly debauched live 
without shame, and tyrannize without mercy over the 



IN ALL AGES. 255 

poor, uncultivated flocks, whom they render ten times 
more stupid and sordid. Within my own knowledge, 
I can go over almost innumerable parishes, and find 
matter of astonishment at the endurance of English- 
men. I once was passing along the street of a county 
town in the evening, and my attention was arrested 
by the most violent ravings and oaths of a man in 
a shop. I inquired the occasion. " Oh ! " said one 
of the crowd, who stood seemingly enjoying the spec- 
tacle, " Oh ! it is only Parson ; he has got 

drunk and followed a girl into her father's house, who 
meeting him at the top of the stairs in pursuit of his 
affrighted daughter, hurled him to the bottom, and 
the worthy man of God is now evaporating his wrath 
in vows of vengeance." From these spectators I 
found it was one of the commonest sights of the town 
to see this clergyman thus drunk, and thus employed. 
But why, said I, do not the parishioners get him 
dismissed ? A smile of astonishment at the simplicity 
of my query went through the crowd. " Get him dis- 
missed! Who shall get him dismissed? Why, he 
is the squire's brother ; he is, in fact, born to the 
living. There is not a man in the parish who is not 
a tenant or dependant in some way on the family ; 
consequently not a man who dare open his mouth." 
They have him, such as he is, and must make their best 
of him ; and he or his brother will be sure to rear a 
similar prophet for the next generation. 

I entered a village not five miles off. This I 
found a lovely retired place, with a particularly hand- 
some church, a noble parsonage, a neglected school, 
and an absent clergyman. The living was 1800/. a 
year — the incumbent a desperate gambler. " Why," 
again I said, " don't you get this man dismissed ?" 
I saw the same smile arise at my simplicity. " La! 
Sir, why he is his lordship's cousin !" It was a 



256 PRIESTCRAFT 

decisive answer — to the principle of private patronage 
this village also owed the irremediable curse of a 
gambling parson. 

I went on. — In a few miles I entered a fine open 
parish, where the church shewed afar off over its 
surrounding level meadows of extreme fertility. 
Here the living was added to that of the adjoining 
parish. One man held them. Together they brought 
2400Z. a year. A curate did the duty at two churches 
and a chapel of ease, formerly for SOL a year — now 
for 100Z. a year. The rector was never seen except 
when he came and pocketed his 2300Z. and departed. 
This man too was hereditary parson. 

But in the parish which I know perhaps better 
than any other, a large and populous parish in Der- 
byshire, no one could recollect having heard of it 
possessing a decent clergyman. The last but one 
was a vulgar and confirmed sot. The last came a 
respectable youth, well married, but soon fell into 
dissipated habits, seduced a young woman of fine 
person and some property, who, in consequence, 
was abandoned by her connexions, married a low 
wretch who squandered her money, and finally died 
of absolute starvation. The clergyman's wife, here- 
tofore a respectable woman, wounded beyond en- 
durance by this circumstance, took to drinking : all 
domestic harmony was destroyed ; the vicar began to 
drink too. A young family of children grew up 
amid all these evil and unfortunate influences : the 
parents finally separated ; and as the pastor fell into 
years, he fell into deeper vice and degradation. I well 
remember him. I remember seeing him upheld, in a 
state of utter intoxication over a grave, by two men, 
while he vainly strove to repeat the burial service, — 
saying, " there is one glory of the sun, and another 
glory of the sun" — till they led him away, and closed 



IN ALL AGES. 257 

the grave. I remember well his small, light person, 
his thin but ruddy countenance, and his singular ap- 
pearance, as he used to trot at a quick pace up to the 
church, or down the village street back again, — for at 
that time he performed duty at three churches, each 
of which was three miles distant from the other. On 
one occasion, in winter, wishing to make great haste, 
he put on his skates and took the canal in his way ; 
but it was not well frozen beneath the bridges, and the 
ice let him in. He hurried home, and changed his 
clothes, but left his sermon in the wet pocket, and 
arrived only to dismiss his long- expecting congrega- 
tion. The old man, notwithstanding his vices, had 
much good-nature and no pride. He accepted every 
invitation to dinner at the weddings of his humblest 
parishioners, for his own dinners were, like those of 
the miser Elwes, generally cold boiled eggs and pan- 
cakes, which he carried in his pockets and ate as he 
went along. His hearers were many of them colliers ; 
and in their cabins he has sometimes got so drunk 
that he has fallen asleep, and they have put him to bed 
with a slice of bacon in one hand, and one of bread 
in the other. I remember him meeting a labourer in 
the fields one Sunday as he returned from church, 
and seeing that the man had been nutting instead of 
to prayer, he said — " Ah, William ! you should not 
go a nutting on a Sunday ! — Have you got a few for 
me, William?" When he administered the sacra- 
ment to the sick, he advised them not to take much 
of the wine, lest it should increase their fever ; but 
added charitably, he would drink it for them, and it 
would do as well. In short, he was not without 
redeeming qualities ; but he is dead ; or rather, was 
kicked out of the world by a horse, when he was in 
a state of intoxication. Another came in his stead ; 
and such another ! 1 see him now in fancy — he is 

s 



258 PRIESTCRAFT 

still the incumbent, or incumbrance of the parish, 
and may be seen by any one who lists — a hard-faced, 
vulgar-looking fellow, whom at a glance you know to 
have a heart like a pebble, a head full of stupid mis- 
chief, and a gripe like iron. I think it was Alderman 
Waithman who said in parliament, that of all tyrannies, 
none are so odious as the tyranny of a parish priest. 
And this fellow is a tyrant to perfection. To the 
poor he speedily shewed himself a fierce and arbitrary 
dictator ; they must abide his pleasure as to the times 
of marrying, burying, and baptism ; and he extorted 
from them the uttermost farthing. It is a coal dis- 
trict ; and the coal had been got in the surrounding 
country, but had been left under the houses to pre- 
vent injury to them. This he claimed and sold. In 
getting the coal, he threw down a part of several 
houses, — cracked and undermined others, and would 
probably have thrown down the church, for the work- 
men were actually beginning to undermine it, when 
the churchwardens interfered. He bought farms, and 
borrowed money to pay for them ; and when com- 
pelled to pay part of the interest, he persuaded the 
attorney to give him a memorandum of the receipt 
without a stamp, and then laid an information against 
him in the Exchequer. He got a commission to prove 
wills, and charged the poor ignorant people double, 
till some one more experienced informed the proctor, 
and got his occupation taken away. He was to be 
found at public-houses, and in the lowest company, 
till the very family who got him the living, absented 
themselves from the church ; yet, with a very common 
kind of inconsistency, when the people complained, 
and asked if he could not be removed, this very 
family declined acting in it, alleging — it would be a 
great scandal for a clergyman to be dismissed from 
his living ! ! At length some unwise guardians, who 



IN ALL AGES. 259 

had lent him the money of their orphan wards on his 
bare note, and the strength of his clerical character, 
have put him in prison ; and the longer he lies, the 
greater the blessing to the people. The following is 
part of the report of the Insolvent Debtors' Court 
when he applied to be discharged : — " The Rev. 
gentleman's debts set forth in his schedule amounted 
to 8945/. 85. 9d. It appeared that he had exercised 
certain lay vocations ; speculated somewhat in land ; 
dabbled a little in twist-lace machinery ; worked a 
colliery ; and now and then enjoyed a bit of horse - 
dealing. The insolvent's income was 246/. per an- 
num, and his out-goings 500/. a-year." 

Such is the ecclesiastical history of this one parish ; 
such would be that of thousands were they related ; 
and all this is the natural result of the absurd and 
iniquitous system of state and individual patronage. 
Till this scandalous mode— this mode so insulting to 
the people of a nation like this, of appointing parish 
ministers — be abandoned, vain is every hope of in- 
ternal strength and life to the church. Let every 
parish choose its own pastor, and a new course will 
commence. The worthy and the talented will take 
heart, — piety will meet its natural reward, and work 
its natural works ; the sot and the hireling incubus 
will disappear ; the vicar will no more come and 
pocket his yearly 2000/. and leave his curate to do his 
yearly labour for 100/. ; multitudes of needful reforms 
will flow into the heart of the church ; a religious 
regimen and new life will animate its constitution. 

The canons of the church must be revised ; its articles 
abolished, or reduced to rationality ; surplice fees 
done away with. It is a crying scandal and oppres- 
sion, that none of the children of Heth are left who 
will say " bury thy dead out of thy sight — what is it 
between me and thee? — bury thy dead;" but the 

s 2 



260 PRIESTCRAFT 

poor man cannot bury his dead except by feeing the 
parson to an amount that will cost him days of hard 
labour and months of privation. " To ask a fee of 
such," says Milton, " is a piece of paltry craft befitting 
none but beggarly artists. Burials and marriages are 
so little a part of the priest's gain, that they who con- 
sider well may find them to be no part of his func- 
tion. It is a peculiar simony of our English divines 
only. Their great champion, Sir Henry Spelman, 
in a book written to that purpose, shews by many 
cited canons, and some of times corruptest in the 
church, that fees extorted or demanded for sacra- 
ments, marriages, and especially for burials, are 
wicked, accursed, simoniacal, and abominable." 



IN ALL AGES. 



261 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCH — CONFIRMATION. 



I look on both sides of this human life- 
Its brightness and its shadow. 



One of the most beautiful and impressive rites of the 
church, is the confirmation of young people as it is 
seen in the country. On some bright summer morn- 
ing, you see troops of village boys and girls come 
marching into the town, headed by the village clerk, 
or schoolmaster. First one, then another little regi- 
ment of these rural embryo Christians, is seen ad- 
vancing from different parts towards the principal 
church. All are in their best array. Their leader, 
with an air of unusual solemn dignity, marches 
straight forward, looking neither to the right hand 
nor to the left, but sometimes casting a grave glance 
behind at his followers. His suit of best black adorns 
his sturdy person, and his lappels fly wide in the 
breeze that meets him. His charge come on in garbs 
of many colours ; — the damsels in green and scarlet 
petticoats ; stockings white, black, and grey ; gowns 
of white, bearing testimony to miry roads and pro- 
voking brambles ; gowns of cotton print of many a 
dazzling flowery pattern ; gowns even of silk in these 
luxurious days ; long, flying, pink sashes, and pink, 
and yellow, and scarlet bunches in bonnets of many a 



262 PRIESTCRAFT 

curious make. The lads stride on with slouching 
paces that have not been learned in drawing and 
assembly-rooms, but on the barn-floor, beside the 
loaded wagon, on the heathy sheep-walk, and in the 
deep fallow field. They are gloriously robed in 
corduroy breeches, blue worsted stockings, heavy- 
nailed ancle-boots, green shag waistcoats, neck-hand- 
kerchiefs of red, with long corners that flutter in the 
wind, and coats shaped by some sempiternal tailor, 
whose fashions know no change. Amid the bustling, 
spruce inhabitants of the town, their walk, their dress, 
their faces full of ruddy health and sheepish simpli- 
city, mark them out as creatures almost of another 
tribe. They bring all the spirit of the village — of 
the solitary farm — of heaths and woods, and rarely 
frequented fields, along with them. You are carried 
forcibly by your imagination, at the sight of them, 
into cottage life, — into the habits and concerns of the 
rural population. You feel what daily anticipations 
— what talk — what an early rising, and bustling pre- 
paration there has been in many a lowly dwelling, in 
many an out-of-the-way hamlet, for this great occa- 
sion. How the old people have told over how it was 
when they went to be confirmed. What a mighty 
place the church is ; what crowds of grand people ; 
what an awful thing the bishop in his wig and robes ! 
How the fond, simple mothers have set forth their 
sons and daughters ; and given them injunction on 
injunction ; and followed them fr.om their doors with 
eyes filled with tears of pride, of joy, and of anxiety, 
How the youthful band, half gay, more than half 
grotesque, but totally happy, have advanced over hill 
and dale. The whole joyousness of their holiday 
feeling is presented to you, as they progressed through 
bosky lanes and dells, through woods, over the open 
breezy heaths and hills, — the flowers, and the dews, 



IN ALL AGES. 263 

and the green leaves breathing upon them their 
freshest influence ; the blue, cheering sky above them, 
and the lark sending down, from his highest flight, 
his music of ineffable gladness. You feel the secret 
awe that struck into their bosoms as they entered the 
noisy, glittering, polished, and in their eyes, mighty 
and proud town ; and the notion of the church, the 
assembled crowds, the imposing ceremony, and the 
awful bishop and all his clergy, came strongly and 
distinctly before them. 

Besides these, numbers of vehicles are bringing in 
other rural neophytes. The carriages of the wealthy 
drive rapidly and gaily on to inns and houses of 
friends. Tilted wagons, gigs, ample cars, are all 
freighted with similar burdens ; and many a strange, 
old, lumbering cart, whose body is smeared with the 
ruddy marl of the fields it has done service in, whose 
wheels are heavy with the clinging mire of roads that 
would make M'Adam aghast, rumbles along, dragged 
by a bony and shaggy animal, that if it must be 
honoured with the name of horse, is the very Helot 
of horses. These open conveyances exhibit groups 
of young girls, that in the lively air, and shaken to 
and fro by the rocking of their vehicle, and the jost- 
ling of chairs, look like beds of tulips nodding in a 
strong breeze. 

As you approach the great church the bustle be- 
comes every moment more conspicuous. The clergy 
are walking in that direction in their black gowns. 
Groups of the families of the country clergy strike 
your eyes. Venerable old figures with their sleek 
and ruddy faces ; their black silk stockings glisten- 
ing beneath their gowns ; their canonical hats set 
most becomingly above, are walking on, the very 
images of happiness, with their wives hanging on 
their arms, and followed by lovely, genteel girls, 



264 PRIESTCRAFT 

and graceful, growing lads. As the rustics' aspects 
brought all the spirit of the cottage and the farm to 
your imagination, they bring all that of the village 
parsonage. You are transported in a moment to the 
most perfect little paradises which are to be found in the 
world — the country dwellings of the English clergy. 
Those sweet spots, so exactly formed for the "otium 
cum dignitate." Those medium abodes, betwixt the 
rudeness and vexations of poverty, and the cumbrous 
state of aristocratic opulence. Those lovely and pic- 
turesque houses, built of all orders and all fashions, 
yet preserving the one definite, uniform character of 
the comfortable, the pretensionless, and the accordant 
with the scenery in which they are placed ; — houses, 
some of old, framed timber, up which the pear and 
the apricot, the pyracantha and the vine clamber; 
or of old, grey, substantial stone ; or of more modern 
and elegant villa architecture, with their roofs which, 
whether of thatch or slate, or native grey stone, are 
seen thickly screened from the north, and softened and 
surmounted to the delighted eye with noble trees : 
with their broad, bay windows, which bring all the 
sunny glow of the south, at will, into the house ; and 
around which the rose and jasmine breathe their de- 
licious odours. Those sweet abodes, surrounded by 
their bowery, shady, aromatic shrubberies, and plea- 
sant old-fashioned glebe-crofts — homes in which, under 
the influence of a wise, good heart, and a good system, 
domestic happiness may be enjoyed to its highest 
conception, and whence piety, and cultivation, and 
health and comfort, and a thousand blessings to 
the poor, may spread through the surrounding neigh- 
bourhood. Such are the abodes brought before your 
minds by the sight of the country clergy ; such are 
thousands of their dwellings, scattered through this 
great and beneficent country, — in its villages and 



IN ALL AGES. 265 

hidden nooks of scattered population, — amid its wild 
mountains, and along its wilder coasts ; — endowed 
by the laws with earthly plenty, and invested by the 
bright heaven, and its attendant seasons, with the 
freshest sunshine, the sweetest dews, the most grate- 
ful solitude and balmy seclusion. 

But the merry bells call us onward ; and lo ! the 
mingled crowds are passing under that ancient and 
time-worn porch. We enter, — and how beautiful 
and impressive is the scene ! The whole of that 
mighty and venerable fabric is filled, from side to side, 
with a mixed, yet splendid congregation, — for the 
rich and the poor, the superb and the simple, there 
blend into one human mass, whose varieties are but 
as the contrast of colours in a fine painting, — the 
spirit of the tout en semble is the nobility of beauty. 
The whole of that gorgeous assembly, on which the 
eye rests in palpable perception of the wealth, the 
refinement, and the elevation of the social life of our 
country, is hushed in profound attention to the read- 
ing of the services of the day by one of the clergy- 
men. They are past ; — the bishop, followed by his 
clergy, advances to the altar. The solemn organ 
bursts forth with its thunder of harmonious sound, 
that rolls through the arched roof above, and covers 
every living soul with its billows of tumultuous 
music, and with its appropriate depth of inexpres- 
sible feeling, touches the secret springs of wonder 
and mysterious gladness in the spirit ; and amid its 
imperial tones the tread of many youthful feet is 
heard in the aisle. You turn, and behold a scene that 
brings the tears into your eyes, and the throb of 
sacred sympathy into your heart. Are they crea- 
tures of earth or of heaven ? Are they the every- 
day forms which fill our houses, and pass us in the 
streets, and till the solitary fields of earth, and per- 



266 PRIESTCRAFT 

form the homely duties of the labourer's cottage — 
those fair, youthful beings, that bend down their bare 
and beautiful heads beneath the hands of that solemn 
and dignified old man ? Yes, through the drops that 
dim our eyes, and the surprise that dazzles them, we 
discern the children of the rich and the poor kneel- 
ing down together, to take upon themselves the 
eternal weight of their own souls. There, side by 
side, the sons and daughters of the hall, and the 
sons and daughters of the hut of poverty, are kneel- 
ing in the presence of God and man — acknowledging 
but one nature, one hope, one heaven ; and our hearts 
swell with a triumphant feeling of this homage wrung 
from the pride of wealth, the arrogance of birth, and 
the soaring disdain of refined intellect, by the vic- 
torious might of Christianity. Yet, even in the 
midst of this feeling, what a contrast is there in these 
children! The sons and daughters of the fortunate, 
with their cultured forms and cultured features — the 
girls just budding into the beauty of early woman- 
hood, in their white garbs, and with their fair hair so 
simply, yet so gracefully disposed, — the boys, with 
their open, rosy, yet declined countenances, and their 
full locks, clustering in vigorous comeliness; — they 
look, under the influence of the same feelings, like 
the children of some more ethereal planet : while the 
offspring of the poor, with their robust figures and 
homely dresses ; with their hair, which has had no 
such sedulous hands, full of love and leisure, to 
mould it into shining softness — nay, that has, in many 
instances, had no tending but that of the frosts and 
winds, and the midsummer scorching of their daily, 
out-of-door lives ; and with countenances in which 
the predominant expressions are awe, and simple 
credence; these touch us with equal sympathy for 
the hardships and disadvantages of their lot. fao. 



IN ALL AGES. 267 

Successively over every bowed head those sacred 
hands are extended, which are to communicate a 
subtle but divine influence ; and how solemn is the 
effect of that one grave and deliberate yet earnest 
voice, which, in the absence of the organ-tones, in 
the hushed and heart-generated stillness of the place, 
is alone heard pronouncing the words of awful import 
to every youthful recipient of the rite. 'T is done, — 
again the tide of music rolls over us, fraught with 
tenfold kindling of that spirit which has seized upon 
us ; and amid its celestial exultings, that band of 
youthful ones has withdrawn, and another has taken 
its place. Thus it goes on till the whole have been 
confirmed in the faith in which their sponsors vowed 
to nurture them, and which they have now vowed to 
maintain for ever. The bishop delivers his parting 
exhortation, and solemnly charges them to return 
home in a manner becoming the sacredness of the 
occasion and of their present act. Filled with the 
glow of purest feelings, breathing the very warmest 
atmosphere of poetry and religious exaltation, we 
rise up with our neighbours, and depart. We depart — 
and the first breath of common air dissipates the 
beautiful delusion in which we have been, for a short 
space, entranced. We feel the rite to be beautiful 
while we cease to think ; but the moment we come to 
penetrate into the mind which lies beneath, it becomes 
an empty dream. We feel that did our after con- 
sciousness permit us to believe that he who adminis- 
tered this rite was filled with its sanctity, and relied 
implicitly on its efficacy, — that the youthful tribe of 
neophytes were rightly prepared by the ministry of 
their respective pastors, and possessed the simple 
credence of past ages to give vitality to the office — 
then, indeed, might it be in fact, what it can now 
only appear for an instant. We feel, moreover, 



268 PRIESTCRAFT 

taking yet lower ground than this, that were the 
clergy a body filled with the zeal of their calling, 
they possess in this ceremony a means of powerful 
influence. But I have hitherto spoken only of its 
poetical and picturesque effect, and that effect endures 
not a step beyond the church doors. At that point 
the habitual apathy of the clergy converts this rite 
into one of the most awful and hideous of mockeries. 
The bishop charges the recipients to return home in 
soberness and decorum ; but he should charge their 
respective clergymen to conduct them thither. But 
where are the clergy ? They are gone to dine with 
the bishop, or their clerical brethren ; and what are 
the morals of the youth to good dinners ? They have 
turned the children over to the clerks. And where 
are the clerks ? They have some matters of trade to 
transact ; — some spades, or cart-saddles, or groceries 
to buy — and what is the health of the children's 
souls to spades, and cart-saddles, and groceries? — 
they have turned the lambs of the flock over to the 
schoolmasters. And where are the schoolmasters ? 
They, like their clerical lords, are gone to dine with 
their brother dominies of the town, having reiterated 
the injunction of the bishop with a mock-heroic 
gravity, as highly, but not as well assumed as that of 
the bishop himself, and with as little effect. While 
they sit and discuss the merits of the last new treatise 
of arithmetic or spelling, the work of some new Dil- 
worth or Entick, their charges have squandered into 
a dozen companies, and each, under the guidance of 
some rustic Coryphoeus, have surrounded as many 
ale-house fires. They are as happy as their betters. 
The loaf and cheese melt like snowballs before them ; 
the stout ale is handed round to blushing damsels 
by as many awkward, blushing swains. Hilarity 
abounds — their spirits are kindled. The bishop, and 



IN ALL AGES. 269 

the church, and the crowd all vanish — or rather, their 
weight is lifted from their souls, which rise from the 
abstracted pressure with a double vivacity. Already 
heated, they set forward on their homeward way At 
every besetting ale-house the revel is renewed. Over 
hill and dale they stroll on, a rude, roistering, and dis- 
graceful rabble. For the effects of this confirmation 
let any one inquire of parish overseers, and they will 
tell him, that it is one of the most fruitful sources of 
licentiousness and crime. The contagion of vice 
spreads under such circumstances, with the fatal ra- 
pidity of lightning. Young and modest natures which 
otherwise would have shrunk from it and been safe, 
are surprised, as it were, into sin, and shame, and 
misery. Instead of a confirmation in Christianity, it 
becomes the confirmation of the Devil. And this 
clergymen know ; and yet with the same apathy 
whence the evil has sprung, they continue to suffer 
its periodical recurrence ; and thus, for want of a little 
zeal, and a little personal exercise of the good office 
of a shepherd, they convert one of the fairest rites of 
their church into one of the worst nuisances that 
afflict our country. 



270 



PRIESTCRAFT 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 



Yet thus is the church, for all this noise of reformation, 
left still unreformed. Milton. 



Thus have we traversed the field of the world. We 
have waded through an ocean of priestly enormities. 
We have seen nations sitting in the blackness of 
darkness, because their priests shut up knowledge in 
the dark-lanterns of their selfishness. We have seen 
slavery and ignorance blasting, under the guidance of 
priestly hands, millions on millions of our race, and 
making melancholy the fairest portions of the earth. 
We have listened to sighs and the dropping of tears, 
to the voice of despair, and the agonies of torture and 
death ; we have entered dungeons, and found their 
captives wasted to skeletons with the years of their 
solitary endurance ; we have listened to their faint 
whispers, and have found that they uttered the 
cruelties of priests. We have stumbled upon mid- 
night tribunals, and seen men stretched on racks ; 
torn piecemeal with fiery pincers ; or plunged into 
endless darkness by the lancing of their eyes ; and 
have asked whose actions these were — and were 
answered — the priests ! We have visited philoso- 
phers, and found them carefully concealing their dis- 
coveries, which would suddenly have filled the earth 
with light, and power, and love, — because they knew 



IN ALL AGES. 271 

the priests would turn on them in their greedy 
malice, and doom them to fire or gibbet. We have 
walked among women of many countries, and have 
found thousands lost to shame, rolling wanton eyes, 
uttering hideous words ; we have turned from them 
with loathing, but have heard them cry after us, as 
we went — " Our hope is in the priests, — they are our 
lovers, and defenders from eternal fire." We have 
entered for shelter from this horror the abodes of 
domestic love, and have stood petrified to find there 
all desecrated — purity destroyed — faith overthrown — 
happiness annihilated ; — and it was the work of 
priests ! Finally, we have seen kings, otherwise 
merciful, instigated by the devilish logic of priest- 
craft, become the butchers of their people ; queens, 
otherwise glorious, become tyrants and executioners ; 
and people, who would otherwise have lived in blessed 
harmony, warring on each other with inextinguishable 
malice and boundless blood-thirstiness ; and behold ! 
it was priestcraft, that, winding amongst them like a 
poisonous serpent, maddened them with its breath, 
and exulted with fiendish eyes over their horrible 
carnage. All this we have beheld, and what is the 
mighty lesson it has taught ? It is this — that if the 
people hope to enjoy happiness, mutual love, and 
general prosperity, they must carefully snatch from 
the hands of their spiritual teachers, all political 
power, and confine them solely to their legitimate 
task of Christian instruction. Let it always be 
borne in mind, that, from the beginning of the world 
to this time, there never was a single conspiracy 
of schoolmasters against the liberties and the 
mind of man : but in every age, the priests, the 
spiritual schoolmasters, have been the most subtle, 
the most persevering, the most cruel enemies and 
oppressors of their species. The moral lesson is 



272 PRIESTCRAFT 

stamped on the destinies of every nation, — the in- 
ference is plain enough to the dullest capacity. Your 
preachers, while they are preachers alone, are harm- 
less as your schoolmasters ; — they have no motive to 
injure your peace ; but let them once taste power, or 
the fatal charm of too much wealth, and the conse- 
quent fascinations of worldly greatness, and like the 
tiger when it has once tasted blood, they are hence- 
forth your cruellest devourers and oppressors. 

We may be told that there is no such pernicious 
tendency now in our establishment, — that it is mild, 
merciful, and pious : my attention may be tri- 
umphantly turned to the great men it has produced ; 
and the number of humble, sincere, and exemplary 
clergymen who adorn their office at the present day. 

Much of this I am not intending to deny ; but if it 
be said, there is no evil tendency in the church, I 
there differ. The present corruption, the present 
admission, even of the clergy, of the necessity of 
reform, is sufficient refutation ; and if it does not now 
imprison, burn, and destroy, we owe it to the refine- 
ment of the age, as the history of the past world will 
amply shew. Human nature is for ever the same; 
it is the nature of priestcraft to render the clergy 
tyrants, and the people slaves ; it always has been 
so; it always will be; the only preventive lies in 
the general knowledge of the community. That the 
church has produced great men, who will not admit, 
that remembers that Plato of preachers — Jeremy 
Taylor, Selden, Tillotson, Hooker, and others ? but 
that it would have produced far more such men, had 
it been more thoroughly reformed, placed on a more 
broad and Christian basis, is equally certain. 

That there are numbers of excellent clergy, I as 
readily admit. I honour and love the good men who, 
in many an obscure village, in the midst of a poor 



IX ALL AGES. 



273 



and miserable population, spend their days with no 
motive but the fulfilment of their duty ; cheerfully 
sacrificing all those refined pleasures, — that refined 
society which their character of mind, and their own 
delightful tastes, would naturally prompt and entitle 
them to. Who do this, badly paid, worse encouraged; 
compelled by their compassion to despoil themselves 
of a great part of their meagre salaries, to stop the 
cries of the terrible necessities by which they are 
surrounded ; — who do this, many of them, at the 
expense of remaining solitary, unallied indivi duals ; 
unmarried, — childless: or if husbands and fathers, 
expending their wives' comforts, their children's 
education on the poverty, which the wealthy incum- 
bents neither look on, nor relieve. When I observe 
them do this, and all the while see their parishes 
drained by some fat pluralist, or sinecurist, who 
scorns to take the cure of souls whom he never goes 
near, except to take the living, and appoint his jour- 
neyman — when I see them look on wealth, dignities, 
and preferments showered on the well-born, well- 
allied, or well-impudenced, while there is a gulph 
between themselves and their attainment as impassable 
as that between Dives and Lazarus, — then do I indeed 
love and honour such men ; and it is for such that I 
would see the church reformed ; and the road to 
greater comfort and more extensive usefulness thrown 
open. I would not, as the bees do, appoint a killing 
day for the drones, but I would have no more 
admitted to the hive. 

There are many excellent men, we admit ; but are 
the multitude such ? We shall undoubtedly be told 
so. The whole body will be represented as the most 
disinterested, holy, beneficent, industrious, wonder- 
working, salvation- spreading body imaginable. In 
their own periodicals and pamphlets, they are, in fact, 



274 PRIESTCRAFT 

represented so. Whether they be so or not, let one of 
the greatest intellects of the age, and one of their own 
warm friends testify — 

The sweet words 
Of Christian promise, words that even yet 
Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached, 
Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim 
How flat and wearisome they feel their trade : 
Rank scoffers some ; but most too indolent 
To deem them falsehoods, or to know their truth. 

Coleridge. 

And let one great truth be marked. — The prevalent 
character of a public body stamps itself in the public 
mind as faithfully as a man's face in a mirror. There 
may be exceptions to a body, and they may be con- 
siderable : but when that body becomes proverbial; 
when it is, as a whole, the object of the jokes, the 
sarcasms, and contempts of the people, that body is 
not partially, but almost wholly corrupt. Now such is 
the character of the church of England clergy, in the 
mind of the British people. We may be told it is the 
vulgar opinion, and the vulgar are wrong. In judg- 
ments of this kind the vulgar, as they are called, are 
right. They always were so : but this too will be denied. 
A body in its corruption, never did, and never will 
admit it ; its only feeling will be anger, not repent- 
ance. When the Romish church was utterly cor- 
rupted ; when its priests and monks were the scandal 
and the scorn of all men, did the church admit it ? 
Did it reform them ? When Luther's artillery was 
thundering against it, and shaking it to its foundations, 
did it admit the justice of his attack ? No ! it only 
turned in rage, and would have devoured him, as it 
devoured all other reformers. When he had knocked 
down many of its pillars, blown up many of its 
bastions, laid bare to public scorn and indignation 
its secret fooleries and horrors, it relaxed not an 
atom of its pretensions, it abated not a jot of its 



IN ALL AGES. 275 

pride, it stayed not its bloody arm, shunned not to 
proclaim itself still holy, invulnerable and supreme. 
While Dante and Bocaccio laughed at its errors, or 
declaimed against its abuses in its own territories ; 
while Erasmus in the Netherlands, Chaucer in Eng- 
land, and Sir David Lindsay, the Chaucer of Scotland, 
were pouring ineffable and everlasting ridicule on its 
monks, its priests and pardoners, they were told 
that theirs was but the retailing of vulgar ignorance 
and envy ; — but what followed ? Time proclaimed it 
Truth. The corrupted tribes were chased away by 
popular fury and scorn, and have left only a name 
which is an infamy and a warning. 

From age to age, the great spirits of the world 
have raised their voices and cried, Liberty ! but the 
cry has been drowned by the clash of arms, or the 
brutish violence of uncultured mobs. Homer and 
Demosthenes in Greece, Cicero in Rome, the poets 
and martyrs of the middle ages, our sublime Milton, 
the maligned, but immoveable servant and sufferer of 
freedom, who laid down on her altar his peace, his 
comfort, and his very eyesight, our Hampdens and 
Sidneys, the Hofers and Bolivars of other lands, have, 
from age to age, cried, Liberty ! but ignorance and 
power have been commonly too much for them. 
But at length, light from the eternal sanctuary of 
truth has spread over every region; into the depths 
and the dens of poverty it has penetrated ; the scholar 
and the statesman are compelled to behold in the 
marriage of Christianity and Knowledge, the promise 
of the establishment of peace, order, and happiness, 
— the reign of rational freedom. We are in the very 
crisis in which old things are to be pulled down, and 
new ones established on the most ancient of founda- 
tions, — justice to the people. To effect safely this 
momentous change, requires all the watchfulness and 
the wisdom of an intelligent nation. The experience 



276 PRIESTCRAFT 

of the world's history, warns us to steer the safe 
middle course, between the despotism of the aristocracy 
and the mob, between the highest and the lowest 
orders of society. The intelligence, and not the 
wealth or multitudes of a state, must give the law 
of safety; — and to this intelligence I would again 
and finally say — be warned by universal history ! 
Snatch from your priesthood all political power ; 
abandon all state religion ; place Christianity on its 
own base- — the universal heart of the people ; let your 
preachers be, as your schoolmasters, simply teachers ; 
eschew reverend justices of the peace ; very reverend 
politicians ; and right reverend peers and legislators, 
as you would have done the reverend knights, and 
marquises, and dukes of the past ages. They must 
neither meddle with your wills, nor take the tenth of 
your corn ; they must neither tax you to maintain 
nouses in which to preach against you, and read your 
damnation in creeds of which no one really knows 
the origin; nor persecute you, nor seize your goods 
for Easter offerings and smoke-money. The system 
by which they tax you at your entry into the world ; 
tax you at your marriage ; tax you at your death ; 
suffer you not descend into your native earth without 
a fee, must be abolished. The system by which you 
are made to pay for everything, and to have a voice 
in nothing — not even in the choice of a good minis- 
ter, or the dismissal of a vile and scandalous de- 
bauchee ; by which you are made the helpless puppet 
of some obtuse squire, and the prey of some greedy 
and godless priest, must have an end. 

On this age, the happiness of centuries — the pros- 
perity of Truth depends ; — let it not disappoint the 
expectations, and mar the destinies of millions ! 



THE END. 



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